


Two Roads Diverged

by FrostyEmma



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama & Romance, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 187,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24445963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyEmma/pseuds/FrostyEmma
Summary: Kenshin and Tomoe don't go to Otsu. They go to Kenshin's former shishou instead.(In which Kenshin is forced to reevaluate his life choices, Tomoe comes to terms with hers, and Hiko must deal with not only his idiot apprentice, but his enigmatic wife. Who is most definitely not hiding anything.)
Relationships: Hiko Seijuurou & Himura Kenshin, Himura Kenshin/Yukishiro Tomoe
Comments: 428
Kudos: 142





	1. Nan-Nan-San-Ku-Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t know your name.” She looked at him for a moment, then her eyes flickered to the ground. “I only know you as Himura Battousai.”
> 
> His eyes widened at that.
> 
> How had they managed… how could she not…?
> 
> He pinched the bridge of his nose, scrunched his eyes shut, and took a breath. It wasn’t funny. It really wasn’t funny at all.
> 
> It was _absurd._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I was going to wait until the new movies came out, but as they've been pushed back to May 2021, I figure I'll just fling this out into the world and see what happens. Stay for the end notes, that you should. 
> 
> \---  
> GLOSSARY  
> Bakufu : the Tokugawa government  
> Miko : shrine maiden, usually the head priest's daughter or granddaughter  
> Nan-nan-san-ku-do : Shinto wedding ceremony involving ceremonial sake drinking of three cups three times  
> Tokaido : the major walking road connecting Edo and Kyoto  
> Satsuma and Choshu : the two allied domains that formed the Ishin Shishi  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over hot rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Daisho : the sword set carried by samurai (and Kenshin), consisting of a long sword (katana) and short sword (wakizashi)

_“Stay with me. I don’t know how long I can be with you, but I don’t want it just for appearances. I want you with me until death parts us.”_

**Founding year of Genji**  
**(8 July 1864)**

In the middle of the night, they found a shrine - small, out of the way, unaffected by the great fire that had swept through Kyoto - and tapped against the door of the sleeping quarters. Softly, but persistently, until the door slid open with a bang and a disgruntled-looking miko in a rumpled sleeping yukata glared at them. 

“What?” She looked them up and down, her eyes narrowing. “What could you possibly want at this time of night?”

For it was very late. 

Not only had they been slowed down by the heavy, persistent downpour (which at least put out any smoldering embers lingering in the ruins), but Bakufu soldiers still roamed the streets, looking to pick off any remaining Shishi loyalists. Or maybe just looking for a fight, looking to savor their victory.

Kenshin shoved the thought aside and instead said, “Can you marry us?”

Next to him, drenched and shivering and clutching her journal, Tomoe said nothing.

“Right now?” The miko looked back and forth between the both of them. “You realize half of Kyoto burned to the ground yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to get married now?”

“Yes.”

Her expression settled into a smirk. “Expecting a little present in the next few months, are you?”

Confused, Kenshin glanced at Tomoe. Her face was as calm as ever, but her cheeks had gone slightly pink.

Oh.

_Oh._

“No, _no._ ” He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose or slap his forehead. “We just-”

“Please.” Tomoe said quietly. Insistently.

For whatever reason, that did the trick, though it didn’t stop the miko from sighing dramatically. 

“Fine. I’ll wake my father. But,” and she held up a finger, “you’re both filthy. You can’t be married in such filth. The world may be ending, Kyoto may have burned to the ground, but we still have our standards.”

\---

They were shown to guest quarters, given clean yukata to change into, and directed to the bath. They would have an hour to get ready.

“But no longer,” the miko warned them. “Some of us want to get back to sleep. And you’ll both be having sleepless nights soon enough.” She slid the shoji shut behind her.

“You should go first,” Kenshin said, pretending not to notice how pink Tomoe’s cheeks had once again turned. 

He stood outside the bathhouse while Tomoe bathed, pacing the covered walkway back and forth, back and forth. 

_“You should go to Otsu. I’ve prepared a farmhouse for you.”_

Tomorrow morning, then. Or perhaps in the evening, when it was safer to travel. They would go to Otsu, as Katsura-san had commanded. They would lie low and live as a married couple.

They would _be_ a married couple.

What was he _doing?_

He stood in the washroom and dumped a bucket of water over his head, then another, and yet another, though it did nothing to clarify his thoughts.

Tomoe had gone back to the room - _their_ room, at least for the evening - wrapped in a clean yukata and looking very pretty, and Kyoto had burned to the ground, and they were on the run, and what the hell was he _doing?_

He washed thoroughly, sloughing the soot and the grime and the dried blood - always dried blood - off his body, and he took his hair down and washed that just as carefully, and he had only just reached his fifteenth summer, and they were fugitives, and they were about to get married, the world was burning down and they would go to Otsu, and what the hell were either of them _doing?_

He put a hand against the wall and took a deep breath.

\---

They stood under the covered walkway of the main sanctuary, both of them wrapped in clean yukata, waiting for the priest and the miko to invite them inside.

The rain continued to hammer the ground.

Tomoe gave a short laugh that was both breathless and humorless. He turned his head questioningly toward her.

“I don’t know your name.” She looked at him for a moment, then her eyes flickered to the ground. “I only know you as Himura Battousai.”

His eyes widened at that.

How had they managed… how could she not…?

He pinched the bridge of his nose, scrunched his eyes shut, and took a breath. It wasn’t funny. It really wasn’t funny at all.

It was _absurd._

“Kenshin.” He looked at her. “My name is Kenshin.”

Her eyes slid back up to his, and he was both surprised and pleased to see a hint of humor in them.

“Kenshin?” she repeated. “‘Sword-hearted’? It suits you.”

“I…” He shook his head. “I didn’t come into the world with that name.”

The door to the sanctuary slid open, revealing the miko, now clad in red and white ceremonial attire. “We’re ready for you.”

\---

The marriage ceremony was very short and mostly a blur. Sake was exchanged three times between them - _nan-nan-san-ku-do_ , he thought - and the priest purified the altar and said a few words and the miko smirked through the entire thing.

_Nan-nan-san-ku-do._

Three cups of sake. Three times. And then they were married.

The miko brought rice and pickles and miso soup to their room, which was more than Kenshin had expected at all, warned them not to keep the whole shrine awake, and took her leave. Probably she went right back to bed.

Someone had laid out two futon, side by side, in their absence. 

Kenshin cleared his throat. Looked at Tomoe and gestured to one of the futon. “You should sleep. Long day tomorrow.”

“It looks like it will be long days for a long time.” Tomoe’s eyes were wide and solemn. She fell silent again, moving to sit down beside the food and positioning his tray before reaching for hers.

Her hands trembled slightly.

He turned away, still on his feet, and slid the shoji open slightly. The rain hadn’t let up, not even a bit.

_Coward._

Still, he didn’t turn back. Not yet. “Maybe it will be easier in Otsu. A simple life, for however long it lasts.”

And yet…

“Do…” There was a definite hitch in Tomoe’s voice. Or had it been just the clack of her bowl against the tray? “Do you want a simple life?” She paused for a handful of heartbeats before continuing in a softer voice. “In Otsu?”

“I’ve never had one.” He closed his eyes for a moment. Steadied himself. “A simple life might be a nice change of pace, for however long it can last.” He hesitated, then, “In Otsu.”

“At this point, I don’t know how long anything will last.” Her breathing had quickened. “I don’t know if anyone knows how long anything will last.”

“Tomoe.” 

Finally he turned to look at her. She looked very small suddenly, pale and wide eyed, chopsticks trembling between her fingers. Not at all her usual image of composure. 

He swallowed. “I don’t think we should go to Otsu.”

Her eyes immediately snapped onto his. She was silent for so long that he was on the point of saying something - he wasn’t sure what - when she finally spoke.

“Neither do I.” She took a deep breath and let it out shakily, her eyes dropping for a moment before refocusing on his. “I have a terrible feeling.”

“So do I.” His mouth worked itself into a frown. “We still don’t know who the traitor is, or if he’s dead or alive, and we’ll be isolated in Otsu and-”

He cut himself off. There was only so much he needed to worry her with. Whatever happened, he would take care of them both.

“I don’t think we should go to Otsu,” he repeated.

“Then…” She hesitated again, her eyes never leaving his, her pupils huge and dark in the dim light. “Where can we go? Kyoto is destroyed.”

His frown deepened. “The Shinsengumi will be watching the roads. And so will any remaining soldiers.” 

“We can’t go to Edo.” She shook her head. “It would be suicide even if we didn’t use the Tokaido.”

“The smaller villages will all be flooded with people fleeing from Kyoto.” He bit back a frustrated sigh. “We’d risk being recognized.”

“Where, then?” Tomoe’s voice seemed small. “Where will we be safe?”

“I don’t know.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, one possibility drifted into his mind unbidden.

No.

_No._

“I’ll think of something.” He realized he’d said it through gritted teeth.

Tomoe’s eyebrow lifted in a silent question at the obvious tension in his response.

“I’ll think of something,” he repeated, then turned away and committed himself to staring moodily at the rain. 

The rain didn’t provide any better options.

Damn it.

Gently he rested his head against the wooden frame of the shoji and closed his eyes. Kyoto was out. Edo was out. The smaller villages ringed around Kyoto were out. Even the Tokaido was out.

_Damn it._

He had been told not to come back. And yet…

And yet…

“There might be a place,” he finally said unwillingly. Grudgingly. 

The silence from behind him seemed to shout Tomoe’s obvious question.

He dragged the words out of his reluctant mouth. “Mount Atago is a possibility.” He slid the shoji shut, turned and looked at her. “If we avoid the main roads, we can get there in a day. Maybe a day and a half.”

“Mount Atago?” Her eyebrows knit. “I… don’t understand. What is there on Mount Atago?”

The words seemed to stick on his tongue. 

He had been told, in no uncertain terms, not to come back. They had mutually ended their arrangement. He would hardly be a welcome guest, and he’d be bringing company besides.

And yet...

He sighed. “My shishou.”

Tomoe’s eyes widened perceptibly. “Another one like you?” she asked after a long moment.

“What?” He felt oddly defensive suddenly, though he couldn’t explain why. “I wasn’t born knowing how to wield a sword, you know.”

She looked at him with an unreadable expression for a long moment before speaking again. “Will we be safe?”

“Physically.” He couldn’t help but mutter, “Not spiritually.” Off her raised eyebrow, he added, “Yes, we will be safe.”

“All right,” she replied after another long pause. “We should go to Mount Atago, then.”

There was nothing to say to that, so instead he said, “You should get some sleep. It’s a long walk.”

He spent the night by the shoji, sitting against the wall with his sword at hand, listening to the endless downpour. Sleep came in jagged fits and hastily interrupted starts.

Judging by the way Tomoe tossed and turned on the futon, she didn’t sleep very well either. 

They would go to Mount Atago. To a place he swore he’d never return, that he was told never to return to. And yet, if it meant keeping her safe…

Tomoe…

His _wife._

They would go to Mount Atago. 

\---  
\---

The sun was setting behind him as he sat on a tree stump outside his front door and watched the darkness gather in the east.

Two days before, he had stood here in the approaching dusk and seen the great fire spreading through Kyoto. He had seen the great plume of grey-black smoke that marked the destruction, and even now that the rain had quenched the flames, the wind still whipped the smell of burning wood and flesh past his face. 

But he had only been able to imagine the number of deaths.

He knew better than to pour himself a saucer of sake just then; it would taste of bitter and burnt ashes. It would serve only to remind him that in spite of all the great power he wielded, he could not save the human race from itself. That the world had decayed even more than he could have imagined even since that day many years ago, when he had come upon the bandits massacring the slave caravan…

No. He would not think about that.

He would not think about _him._

Sighing, he closed his eyes and let the sound of the steady drizzle fill his ears. The trees offered enough shelter that only the odd drip ever fell on him, and the rain was comforting in its own fashion. The rain had doused the fires in Kyoto, it would wash the scent of smoke from the air, and it would soak the ashes into the soil so that new crops could grow.

If only a true rain might one day fall, he reflected with fresh bitterness, it might wash the filth and corruption of mankind from the face of the earth.

He heard the approach of footsteps long before he would have seen anyone, even if he had opened his eyes. After so many years living on Mount Atago, he was attuned enough to his surroundings that he knew the footfalls of every animal in the forest. He could distinguish a deer from a man by sound alone, and this was no deer that was making its way toward his house.

There were two sets of footsteps, one of which was short of stride and rather clumsy of step. The other, by contrast, was as surefooted as a mountain deer. And, to his annoyance, he found he recognized it.

“It’s been a long time.” He did not open his eyes. “What are you doing here, boy?”

When no response came, he opened his eyes to glare at his idiot apprentice - and found himself shocked.

The boy had gotten taller in the year since he had turned his back on his apprenticeship, though he was still as lean as ever. His face, however, was barely recognizable. Hollow-eyed, with a long scar extending from his left cheekbone nearly to his chin, it was the face of a boy who had walked into a war of his own accord and been thoroughly unprepared for what he would see.

What he would be a part of.

And the boy was not alone, either. Coming up behind him was the owner of the second set of footsteps, and it was clear immediately why those footsteps had been so clumsy: it was a young woman. A girl, really; older than the boy but not by much, who wore an elegant silk kimono and lacquered wooden zori. The height of fashion in Kyoto, perhaps, but thoroughly useless for hiking up the side of a mountain in the rain.

The both of them were filthy and bedraggled, the girl’s sophisticated clothing soaked with rain and spattered with mud. The boy had fared no better, and there was blood mingled with the mud on his garments.

“It has been some time,” the boy finally said. Standing a little ways behind him, the girl said nothing, though she managed to convey her misery quite clearly.

“I take it the war isn’t going as well as you planned,” he said with a hint of acidity. Not expecting a response - or bothering to pause for one - he gestured at the girl. “Who is she?”

“My wife.” The boy gestured, and the girl took a hesitant step forward. “Tomoe.”

The girl - Tomoe - executed a perfect bow despite her soaked and shivering state, and the boy continued.

“Tomoe, this is my…” He hesitated a beat too long. “Former shishou, Hiko Seijuro.” Another pause. “The Thirteenth.”

Hiko glared ominously at the boy - there was still the matter of his having abandoned his apprenticeship to be discussed - but he chose to attempt some sort of politeness towards the girl.

“Wife?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “And how long ago did this happen?”

They actually exchanged a glance with each other, and he caught a brief look of mental calculation flitting across both their faces. 

The boy just barely shrugged, and the girl offered, “Three days ago.”

“Oh, good.” Hiko allowed himself a small smile. “Then there’s still enough time for you to think better of marrying my idiot apprentice.”

He turned his eyes to the boy, who was glowering predictably. “I asked you why you came here, Kenshin. Have you finally understood what it means to involve yourself in a war?” 

“Nearly half of Kyoto burned to the ground the other night,” Kenshin said flatly. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I had.” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “And whose idea was that? Your friends in the Satsuma and the Choshu? Or the Shinsengumi?” He shook his head in disgust. “Or was it simply collateral damage? Was it an acceptable price to pay for one side’s victory, for so many to be left dead or homeless?”

The girl - Tomoe - shivered visibly, and he shook his head again. As much as he might have to discuss with his idiot apprentice, the girl did not deserve to fall ill from damp chills while they argued.

“Come inside.” He rose to his feet and beckoned to them. “Kenshin, go and light the fire for the bath. I’ll have dinner ready when the both of you are clean and dry.”

Kenshin said nothing, but he did turn and head toward the bath. If the girl was expecting something like she might find in Kyoto, she’d be sorely disappointed. The bath was a repurposed rain barrel situated in a small shed, with a cramped space inside for washing up.

Still, it would be warm.

Tomoe followed Hiko into the hut and stood wordlessly on the dirt floor of the kitchen space, dripping wet and shivering. After a moment, she seemed to collect herself and offered another bow, deeper this time.

“Thank you,” she murmured, “for your hospitality.”

He turned to her for a moment, then bent down to search for a saucer and uncork his sake jug. “You’re drenched and cold,” he offered by way of response as he poured the sake for her and held the saucer out. “This will help.”

She took the saucer with both hands, lifted it to her lips, and drained the whole thing. “Again, thank you. Though it might go right to my head.” She looked down at the empty saucer. “We ran out of food the other day.”

Hiko sighed as he poured water into the tea kettle and hung it over the hearth on the raised wooden floor to boil, then moved back into the kitchen space. “If it goes to your head, then at least you’ll have a decent night’s sleep. I can’t imagine you’ve had that for the past several days either.”

He refilled her saucer nonetheless. 

“My idiot apprentice didn’t want to come here, did he?” He brought out the jar of pickled vegetables and filled a pair of bowls. “Is that why it took so long for you to get here?”

“The main roads were being patrolled by both Shinsengumi and Bakufu soldiers.” She sat on the edge of the raised wooden floor that made up the rest of the hut, cradling the saucer in both hands. “And the smaller roads were washed out.”

She stared into the saucer, her expression unreadable.

The tea kettle hissed over the fire and Hiko busied himself making ochazuke. There was still enough rice in the pot for two bowls’ worth, even though he had planned on using it for his breakfast the following morning.

“Here.” He held out a bowl of pickled vegetables and a bowl of tea-soaked rice to her. “Eat. I’ll go and look in the storage shed for something for you to wear.”

Perhaps she could wear some of his idiot apprentice’s old things, he thought as he walked off. Heaven only knew why he had kept them, but at least they could serve a purpose now.

She was eating hungrily when he returned with an old cotton kimono for her and a battered training gi and hakama for Kenshin. He’d shaken and slapped the dust from them, and they were likely enough to be comfortable, being as well-worn as they were. In any case, they were dry.

“So how did you happen to meet my idiot apprentice, anyway?” He looked at her mostly-empty bowl and wondered whether he ought to put more rice on to cook. “From what I gathered, he was too busy misusing the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu I taught him to do anything remotely social.”

She looked at him, her face a mask of inscrutable calm. “I had too much to drink and I passed out in the street. He brought me to the Kohagiya, which turned out to be one of the headquarters of the Choshu Ishin Shishi.” She stared into the remains of her rice bowl. “Gone now.”

Hiko sighed deeply. 

It was just like Kenshin to display that sort of compassion. That was the main reason that the boy’s departure and subsequent descent to the disgraceful level of political assassination had bothered him so much: his compassionate nature would lead him to any lengths. He would rescue an injured animal, or bring a drunken woman back to his inn, or throw himself recklessly into a war that he had no business fighting, if he could convince himself that it was the compassionate thing to do.

“Along with the rest of the city,” he added gruffly, deciding at last to cook another pot of rice. They would all need it for breakfast the next morning, after all. “And what was he doing when he found you in the street?”

She said nothing.

Hiko nodded grimly as he poured water and rice into the pot and set it on the stove to cook. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He was employed as a hitokiri, after all. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that you’d see him at it.” He arched an eyebrow. “Were you frightened?”

She looked up at him. “Should I have been?”

He looked at her impassively. “Those are two separate questions.”

“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Yes to both?” 

“The bath is ready.” Kenshin was in the doorway suddenly. His gaze flitted between Hiko and Tomoe. An expression of… was it distrust? unease? crossed his face but didn’t land, and he settled his gaze on Tomoe. “Come. I’ll show you.”

Wordlessly, she set the rice bowl aside, picked up the well-worn kimono, and followed Kenshin out the door, bowing briefly as she passed Hiko.

A few minutes later, Kenshin was back in the doorway, and this time his expression was decidedly unpleasant.

“And what are you looking so put out over, boy?” Hiko gestured at the bowls of ochazuke and pickled vegetables he had set aside for Kenshin. “Eat your dinner, and then perhaps you can tell me whether you’ve thought better of your career choices lately.”

“So it’s going to be that kind of conversation, is it?” 

Kenshin crossed the kitchen in a few steps, eased his katana - apparently he needed a set of daisho now - out of his belt, and set it down on the raised wooden floor before accepting the bowls of food. 

He did mutter a “thank you” before he sat down on the edge of the raised floor and began eating, so there was that.

“Your wife.” Hiko poured himself a saucer of sake and set down the jug close at hand. “She’s not the most forthcoming of women, is she?”

“No,” Kenshin said through a mouthful of rice. He barely paused between bites, eating until the bowl was empty, before starting on the pickles.

“Slow down before you choke.” Hiko checked the new pot of rice, saw that it needed more time, and drank his sake. “If it hadn’t taken you so long to get here, you might not be so hungry. Your wife tells me that the roads were washed out. Is that the only reason it took you three days to get from Kyoto to the mountain?”

“Shinsengumi. Bakufu soldiers.” He ate until the pickles were gone and set the bowl down. “Didn’t want any unnecessary confrontations. And…” His gaze strayed to the doorway, and when his wife failed to suddenly appear, he finished with, “She was not best prepared to travel.”

“I’d noticed.” Hiko poured a saucer of sake and held it out to Kenshin, who shook his head in refusal. He shrugged and drained it off himself. “But I don’t imagine you had very much in the way of warning before you had to flee, did you?”

“No.”

“No.” Hiko eyed his suddenly tight-lipped apprentice. “Except for the fact that you were fighting a war. And the fact that just because your new friends were incapable of defeating the Bakufu does not mean that the reverse was true.”

He looked at Kenshin for a long moment, then shook his head and poured himself another saucer of sake. “You were never meant for war. No practitioner of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu ever is, but I think you are uniquely ill-suited.”

“This argument again?” Again, Kenshin’s gaze flitted to the doorway. Still no wife.

“Not again.” Hiko didn’t bother waiting for Kenshin’s eyes to return to him. “Still.” 

Kenshin said nothing.

Hiko glowered at him. “Did you spend the past year trying desperately to convince yourself that you were still right in your convictions? That you hadn’t made the worst mistake of your life in leaving this mountain - leaving your training - to go and fight the wars of lesser men?” 

“Lesser men?” Kenshin snorted, his disgust a palpable thing. “Because better men look the other way when people are suffering?”

“Because better men would devote the time and effort it takes to learn these skills themselves rather than merely employing others to do their killing for them.” Hiko’s eyes blazed. “The practitioner of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is the only one who may ever judge who deserves to die by Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. Otherwise, he would be nothing more than a weapon to be wielded, rather than the man he must be.” 

Abruptly Kenshin picked up his sword and stalked toward the door. “I’m not having this conversation again. I’m going to check on my wife.”

“I heard the stories, you know.” Hiko watched his idiot apprentice pause at the door. “The rumors of the hitokiri they called Battousai. The demon with flaming red hair whose targets always fell on the first stroke of his sword.”

The boy seemed to wince at that. 

“I always found it difficult to believe those stories,” Hiko went on. 

The act of forming the words was difficult in itself, but he was seized with the sudden certainty that they were of utmost importance. 

“Not because I doubted there could be a man of such skill. I knew exactly what I had taught you to do.” He shook his head. “But because I could never connect that cold-blooded murderer with the boy who lived under my roof for seven years.”

He drained his sake and stared hard at Kenshin’s back. “I tried to tell you what would happen if you abandoned your training. You thought you knew better than I did, and now look at you.”

Kenshin was silent for a very long moment. Too long, and Hiko was about to speak again when the boy abruptly said:

“I’ve taken no pleasure in it. Any of it.” He didn’t turn around. “But if it means helping to bring in a new era, one free of the pointless suffering that I see all around me, then I’ll continue to do what has to be done. No matter the cost to myself.”

And then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST:  
> So... uh... I'm an old school Ruroken fan who had been out of the fandom (and anime in general) for a long damn time. Then last summer, I discovered the 3 awesome live action movies, and because the MCU and I are on a long break right now, my inner-Ruroken fan came screaming back to life.
> 
> This is a story that I've thought about off and on for a long time, and now seems like the time to finally put it out in the world. I'll try to update once a week, but we'll see how that goes.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND:  
> My favorite conspirator and ace beta reader, who also introduced to me to the concept of HOT! DATEABLE! BISHOUNEN! SHINSENGUMI CAPTAINS! (no seriously this is apparently a game), is @an_earl, who has certainly helped stoked the fire of my new (old) obsession.
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD:  
> Comments, feedback, kudos, and just saying what up are all warmly welcomed, hoped for, and appreciated. Feedback is the bread of a fanfic writer's life. You can also come say hi to me on tumblr @frostyemma.


	2. Mount Atago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few moments passed in very tense silence before Hiko spoke again. 
> 
> “Your face.” His voice was flat. “Who did that to you?”
> 
> Kenshin didn’t mean to let the zori tumble out of his grasp, didn’t mean to let his fingers trail down the length of the scar marring his left cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of terms:  
> Zori: sandals, can be made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Onigiri: rice triangle often stuffed with plum, fish, or pickles  
> Tokaido : the walking road between Edo and Kyoto  
> Wakizashi : short sword, companion to katana (long sword)  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Tabi: split-toe socks  
> Hakubaikou : white plum perfume

_“But when I see his sleeping face, he is still just a young man.”_

**Founding year of Genji**  
**(11 July 1864)**

The walk to Mount Atago had taken three days.

Three days of staying off the main roads, of discovering that even the smaller footpaths had been washed out by the heavy rains, and of trudging endlessly through the forest. And not the tranquil bamboo forest that Tomoe knew to be on the outskirts of Kyoto either, but a dense, gnarled forest of slippery rocks, knee-high mud puddles, and tangled roots just waiting to trip women foolish enough to flee while wearing lacquered wooden zori.

Kenshin - her _husband now_ \- never once remarked on how much she was slowing him down. He took her hand to keep her steady and on her feet, but he didn’t remark on that either. And when they only had one salted plum onigiri left between them - they had purchased a small package of food from the shrine before departing - he suddenly wasn’t very hungry at all and left it to her.

It was somehow much easier now for her to accept this version of him - the kind, quiet, almost noble young man who was still shy around her - and to avoid thinking about the other side of him.

When they reached the foot of Mount Atago on the evening of the third day, she nearly sagged in defeat, then resolved to climb without complaining. But it did not take long for her to realize that if the forest had been a hard slog, the mountain would certainly get the better of her. 

Not only was she dressed in a kimono that resisted all her efforts at anything above a leisurely stroll through the marketplace, with shoes that were possibly the least useful things in the world, she had never done walking any more strenuous than the well-maintained dirt roads of the Tokaido. 

They climbed at a snail’s pace, Tomoe breathing heavily and unable to feel her feet after hours upon hours of walking in those awful zori. 

Abruptly, Kenshin stopped and turned to her, and she braced herself for frustrated words that never came. Instead, he hesitated for a long moment, then said:

“I could carry you, you know.”

“I - no.” She shook her head blearily and put her hand against the trunk of a tree to steady herself. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. I don’t want to be any more of a burden than I already am…”

Still, she felt herself wavering on her feet as she spoke. 

“You didn’t ask. I offered. And…” A small smile flitted across his mouth and he pushed a hand through his filthy hair. “You’re not a burden. You’re my wife.”

She looked doubtfully up the mountain. As much as she might have gamely tried to push herself, she knew that there was no realistic chance of dragging herself up that interminable slope before she starved to death or simply collapsed from exhaustion and never rose again.

So she uttered not a single word of protest when Kenshin hoisted her onto his back, tenderly slid the zori off her feet, and tucked them into his belt.

The speed with which he was able to move while carrying her both amazed and embarrassed her. Even carrying her weight, he seemed to almost glide effortlessly over the rocky ground and up the steep slope of the mountainside.

“I’m worse than useless,” she murmured into the back of his shoulder. “You’re moving twice as fast carrying me than we did when I was walking under my own power.”

“I used to climb this mountain while carrying bags of rice.” He wasn’t even out of breath. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“If there are any flowers up there, I can arrange them.” She rested her face against his back and tried not to focus on her numb and throbbing feet. “Apart from that, I don’t think I’ve had much practice at anything.”

He chuckled at that, low and soft. She wasn’t used to hearing him do that, and it was… nice.

“You can cook,” he said easily, as if he were taking a stroll and not jogging them both up a mountain in the evening. 

“Yes,” she allowed. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to be the one who brings the ingredients to me.” A small smile. “Since you’ve had the practice.”

\---

She sat huddled in the deep wooden tub (which appeared to be a repurposed rain barrel), the hot water soothing away the aches and stiffness of the past several days. The sweat and dirt of their escape had been scrubbed off, the feeling had come back to her feet, and the soft-looking cotton kimono that Hiko-san had unearthed for her seemed as though it would feel very comfortable to put on when she was dry.

A stray tendril of hair had escaped from the hasty pile she’d made atop her head, and she reached up sluggishly to tuck it back in. Her hand seemed almost as though it was loath to respond to her brain. If she didn’t get out of the bath now, she realized, she’d likely fall asleep in the tub and need to be rescued by Kenshin.

She pulled herself to her feet with difficulty, slowly and clumsily climbed out of the tub, and rubbed herself dry before pulling on the kimono. Though it was a solid dark color and clearly cut for a man’s body, it was every bit as comfortable as it looked and could easily be dressed up with her own obi and accessories. She reminded herself to thank Hiko-san once more before going to sleep.

“Tomoe?” Kenshin’s voice was soft outside the bath shed. “How are you doing in there?”

She slid the door open and stood face-to-face with him.

“Exhausted.” She shifted the bundle she had made of her filthy kimono in her hands. Her eyes came to rest on his sword, then back up to the strained look on his face.

“You forgot to bring the clean clothes out with you.” She moved aside so that he could enter the bathing shed. “I’ll bring them out to you when I come back to take your dirty clothes inside.”

Her eyes flickered down to his sword once again.

Kenshin sighed. “My shishou-” he made a ‘tsk’ of annoyance, “ _former_ shishou is a hard man to talk to. Being away for a year hasn’t changed that.”

“Is he that hard to talk to?” she asked, gesturing at the sword.

He scowled at that. “Look, I don’t bathe with it, all right? I walked out, I wanted to check on you, I just… I just…” He put a hand to his forehead, scrunched his eyes shut. “It’s been a long day. A long few days.”

“It’s all right.” She put out her free hand to touch him lightly on the shoulder, then, hesitantly, let her hand move down towards the sword. “I can… take it back to the house, if you don’t mind.”

He was silent for a very long moment. Long enough that she considered just wordlessly going back to the hut and retrieving his change of clothes. 

“All right,” he said abruptly. He passed the sword to her, though she noted he kept the wakizashi tucked in his belt. “Thank you.”

The weapon felt hot in her hand as she walked back to the house. The thought of all the deaths it had been responsible for chewed at her mind, and the knowledge that she was holding the very sword that had stolen Kiyosato-sama’s life bulled its way to the forefront of her thoughts no matter how hard she tried to push it aside.

It was a relief to put the thing down.

She left the sword propped against the wall, dropped her muddy kimono bundle in a washing bucket by the doorway - her own kaiken dagger in its lacquered sheath still rolled up inside it - and hurried to gather the training gi and hakama that Hiko-san had brought in for Kenshin. A few moments later, she was back outside, swapping the clean clothes for the pile of dirty ones that Kenshin had rolled into a neat bundle.

He had not left the wakizashi for her to take back as well.

Back inside the hut, Hiko-san had laid out two futon and was now sitting beside the hearth on the floor, his legs crossed casually and a steaming cup of tea in his hand. 

“This is all I have.” He gestured to both futon. “You’ll have to share with your husband, though I don’t imagine that will be a problem for either of you.”

The thought of that made her cheeks burn, so she made herself busy unnecessarily tidying the bundles of dirty clothing in the washing bucket.

“It won’t be a problem,” she agreed. “I’ve not seen him sleep in a futon.”

“And how have you seen him sleep?” Hiko-san’s voice had an inflection she was not sure she liked. “If not in a futon?”

“Against the wall.” When the clothing bundles seemed as neatened as they could possibly be, she joined Hiko-san on the raised wooden floor, leaving her muddy zori on the step below. “With his sword.”

A look of confusion, followed by disapproval and - was it sadness? - came over Hiko-san’s face, and he heaved a sigh that seemed to deflate his massive body.

“I suppose I’ll have to do something about that, then.”

She knelt down across from him and was on the verge of asking what he had in mind to do, but one simple glance at the futon was all it took. She worked to stifle a very rude yawn; the only thing keeping her eyes open was the thought of looking discourteous in front of her host. 

“Well, you’re clearly exhausted.” Hiko-san didn’t bother to stifle his own crude smirk. “Get into bed. I’ll put out the light and deal with your husband when he comes inside.”

She should have protested. She should have waited for both Kenshin and Hiko-san to be ready for bed. She should have done any number of things, but instead she crawled gratefully into the futon and pulled the blanket up.

Sleep came mere seconds later.

\---

The sunlight streaming into the hut through unshuttered windows was what finally dragged her sluggishly back to consciousness. Her immediate impulse to roll over, bundle herself more tightly in her blanket, and let sleep claim her again was overridden by her sudden recollection of where she was and what had brought her there.

Her hair fell in her face as she sat up abruptly, and she pushed a hand through it to clear it from her eyes as she looked around the room.

The light slanted down into the hut from a high sun - high enough for her to think it must have been several hours after dawn. The windows were wide open, rudimentary shutters propped open with wooden arms, and a fresh mountain breeze wafted in through them.

Hiko-san’s futon was folded neatly and set aside against the wall. Hiko-san himself was nowhere to be seen, though there was a scent of freshly-made ochazuke coming from the kitchen space. But Kenshin was there, sitting against the wall in his usual sleeping position, with one knee drawn up to his chest and the other out to his side.

His sword was in his arms.

He cracked an eye open. “How’d you sleep?”

“I don’t know yet.” She ran a hand through her hair again and tried to blink away the sleepiness still fogging her mind. A yawn crept up on her and she tried hard to swallow it. “How long did I sleep?”

“I don’t know. Long.” He smiled faintly. “No clock up here.”

“I suppose Hiko-san doesn’t need one.” She wondered briefly what other things might be scarce or completely absent up on Mount Atago, before finally processing the fact that Kenshin had been awake and alert as soon as he’d heard her stir. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine.” He shrugged and set his sword down. “Are you hungry?” He gestured vaguely toward the stove. “There’s ochazuke.”

“It looks like dawn came and went hours ago.” 

The blanket pooled around her waist. The soft cotton kimono she was wearing was even more comfortable now than it had been after her bath last night, and she wondered idly whether she could wear it for the entire time they were up there. However long that might be.

“Will you share the ochazuke with me?” she asked, getting to her knees and thinking of folding up the futon while Kenshin brought them breakfast. “And tomorrow, if you like, I can make some Edo-style rice porridge instead.”

He looked at her for a moment, then got up and headed toward the stove, pausing only to step into his straw zori. While Tomoe alternately watched him and folded up her futon, he took two bowls from a shelf and filled them with the ochazuke, then reached into a jar and ladled in some pickled vegetables. He grabbed a couple of wide ceramic spoons out of a wooden container.

It was quite obvious he knew his way around the space.

“Is Edo famous for its rice porridge?” he asked when he returned, handing her a bowl and sitting across from her. 

“No.” She took the bowl and stirred the pickles into the rice-and-tea mixture. “But I grew up there, so I learned to make rice porridge for breakfast as well. It’s different from ochazuke, and heartier.”

“I would like that then.” He smiled faintly down into his bowl. “I didn’t know you were from Edo.”

“It never came up.” She looked at him with a twinge in her heart. “It’s nice to see you smile. I know there hasn’t been much worth smiling about for a long time, but...” She looked down somewhat shyly. “It’s nice.”

He ate a few spoonfuls of ochazuke before replying. “After we wash up, I’ll show you around.”

\---

The view from the mountainside was like something out of a great master’s painting. Tomoe’s breath caught in her chest at the beauty of it - the tall and ancient pines, the achingly blue sky, the rolling green hills spreading out below so that she could not even see the city they had left behind them…

Kenshin - who had left the wakizashi in the house, but still kept the katana at his waist - showed her around Hiko-san’s homestead with the quick and disinterested familiarity of a boy showing a stranger his own home. The house itself was small, but well-made, with a thatched roof of straw and a tidily-cleared patch of earth surrounding it. Built against the side of the house was what appeared to be a storage shed, which was where Tomoe supposed Hiko-san must have gotten the dry clothes and the spare futon. The bathing shed looked larger in the daylight than it had seemed at night, and the stream that ran in the forest behind it seemed a likely enough spot for washing their travel-stained clothes.

Hiko-san emerged from the woods right then, a woven basket full of what appeared to be fish slung casually over his shoulder.

“Finally awake, are you?” he said. “I was wondering whether I’d see either of you before the hour of the horse.”

Tomoe couldn’t help but notice that as soon as Hiko-san spoke, Kenshin stiffened visibly. She wondered whether Hiko-san had seen it as well. After a moment, though, she wondered instead whether Hiko-san had _wanted_ such a reaction. 

The pair of them had not parted on good terms; Tomoe had gathered as much from the little bit of their conversation she had heard. Part of her began to ask whether they might have been better off going to Otsu after all.

She hastily pushed that thought aside.

\---  
\---

It wasn’t as if Kenshin had forgotten where he was. Not at all. 

Such a thing would’ve never been possible. But - for a scant few moments at least - it had been nice to simply show Tomoe around and not have to think about anything else.

“We didn’t mean to sleep in.” He couldn’t help but glower, and also couldn’t help but notice Tomoe looking at him curiously. “It’s been a hard few days.”

Hiko responded only by arching an eyebrow and turning away from him to address Tomoe. “Did you enjoy having the futon to yourself, then?”

A spot of color appeared on each of Tomoe’s cheeks, but her face was otherwise impassive as she inclined her head politely. “I slept quite well, thank you. Your hospitality is much appreciated.”

“I was being courteous,” Kenshin said flatly. “Like people do.”

“Courteous?” Hiko’s eyebrow arched prominently again. “Is that what you call it?”

Kenshin wasn’t going to argue with him. Not there, not then, not after they had trudged for three miserable days just to reach the place. And not when his shishou - _former_ shishou - was giving them a place to stay for the time being.

Best to rise above it. Best to be courteous. 

“Let me help you with our laundry,” he said to Tomoe. “It’s filthy enough that it will take the both of us to get it clean.”

Between the caked-in dirt, the splatters of mud, and the dried blood - always, always dried blood - and the fact that they decided to wash their underlayers and tabi as well, it took them a few hours by the river to thoroughly wash and hang their laundry. 

Afterward, Tomoe decided to take inventory of the kitchen and shooed Kenshin away so she could concentrate. (Or perhaps she just wanted a moment to shake her head in disbelief at how paltry their kitchen was compared to the relatively luxurious space of the Kohagiya.)

He shoved all thought of the Kohagiya aside.

In the meantime, Kenshin dug through the shed and found an old pair of well-worn straw zori. Slightly bigger than what Tomoe wore, but he could reweave them a bit and make them workable. And it was better than letting her walk around in those cumbersome wooden zori. 

He propped his sword against the shed’s outer wall, squatted against the wall as well, and began to work, fingers nimbly untying and reweaving the straw. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been at leisure to do something so mundane.

Better not to think about it. 

A large shadow fell across his line of sight. He didn’t need to look up to know who it was, and anyway, he had heard him coming. 

“Your wife is inside, reorganizing my kitchen.” Hiko sounded as though he could not decide whether he was annoyed or amused. “Apparently, I’ve been lackadaisical about laying in enough supplies for the two houseguests I had no idea I’d be having.”

Kenshin glanced up at him for courtesy’s sake and then went back to weaving. “We had no idea either. Sudden change of plans.”

“Indeed. Wars are inconvenient in that respect.”

“Indeed.” 

He focused on the zori. Easier than focusing on the Kohagiya. On his lost compatriots. On the unidentified traitor in their ranks. On Katsura-san’s probable fate.

Easier than focusing on the man in front of him, certainly.

A few moments passed in very tense silence before Hiko spoke again. 

“Your face.” His voice was flat. “Who did that to you?”

Kenshin didn’t mean to let the zori tumble out of his grasp, didn’t mean to let his fingers trail down the length of the scar marring his left cheek. 

And yet.

He waited a beat. Made sure his voice was steady. Scooped the zori up as if he hadn’t dropped it at all.

“Why?” He said the word carefully.

“When you were still training with me, you were too fast for anyone but me to have ever landed a blow on you.” There was clear disappointment in Hiko’s voice. “And for someone to have struck your head would have been unthinkable. So either your opponent must have had greater skill and speed than I do -” He snorted. “Which is unthinkable - or you must have grown supremely careless.” He paused. “Unless there is another explanation?”

Despite the warmth of the summer day, a nauseating chill stole over him. It crept up Kenshin’s body, bit by awful bit, until ice clenched around his heart and squeezed. He nearly gasped at the sensation and just barely suppressed a shiver.

He didn’t want to think about that night. He didn’t ever want to think about that night.

“It was…” He tried to swallow the sudden block of ice in his throat. “It was early. One of my earliest…” His voice trailed off somewhere. He stared very hard at the ground.

“Was that why, then?” Hiko did not appear to have moved. His voice had a strange tone. “Were you beginning to realize, even then, what a profound situation you had gotten yourself into? Was that what brought your guard down?”

Kenshin found his voice somewhere. “I didn’t let my guard down.”

“How else would someone have been able to strike you in the face?” 

“It was…” 

Luck. Desperation. The desire to live, the desire to not be cut down in the street and left to die in the gutter like-

_No._

He sucked in his breath and tried to focus on weaving the strands of straw back together, but his fingers didn’t want to cooperate. 

“Why do you want to know?” he managed to say. 

“You’re my apprentice.” There was a definite note of annoyance in Hiko’s voice now. “Idiot or otherwise. And if you’ve fallen so far from the level you were on before you left, I want to know why.”

“Was.”

“Running away from your apprenticeship isn’t the same thing as completing it.” Hiko’s voice soured considerably. “You were nowhere close to mastery a year ago, and from the look of things, you’re even farther away now.”

Kenshin was on much surer footing now. This argument, he could handle. This was familiar territory, and he was almost relieved for it.

“I didn’t run away.” He picked at a loose tendril of straw. “We mutually agreed to end things.”

“We did not _mutually agree_ on anything.” The scowl in Hiko’s voice was evident. “You refused to listen to my advice, you disobeyed my order to remain and continue your training, and you walked off.” 

“That is not what happened.” Abruptly he dropped the zori and surged to his feet. The damn things would have to wait. “We argued about it, and you _told_ me I could go. It was mutual.”

“I wonder sometimes whether you learned Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu so well because there was no room in your head for anything else.” Hiko glared down at him, his arms folded under the cloak. 

Kenshin glared right back.

“When I told you to go, it was my intention for you to realize what a foolish decision you were making. If you’d had the slightest bit of sense inside that empty skull of yours, you would have understood that and stayed where you belonged.”

“Like you have?” 

Whatever vague, half-formed promises Kenshin had made to himself about not getting into any arguments while he was there blew away on a hot wave of old anger.

“I should have just stayed up here and ignored everything happening around me? I should have been content to just stay here and do _nothing_ while people continued to suffer and die, because somehow that was the better decision?” 

“It was certainly a better decision than traipsing down the mountain to become a hitokiri!” Hiko’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders seemed to swell. “Did you ever listen to a word I said about the power of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu? Did you ever consider what taking that many lives in cold blood would do to your mind? Or did you only ever think of these supposed great deeds you were performing?”

“Great deeds?” Kenshin would have laughed at that, laughed in the face of his shishou’s - _former_ shishou’s - cold cynicism, but fury gripped him tightly instead. “Of course you would say something like that. Of course you would find a way to turn it all into _nothing_ , while you stay up here isolated from everyone and everything, not giving a damn about what goes on in this world.”

Hiko snorted. “And you think you can improve the world with your sword?” 

“Wasn’t that the point?” 

Kenshin’s face burned. His whole body burned with resentment and frustration and an almost deranged sense of rage, and he couldn’t see how to rise above _any_ of it. 

“Wasn’t that the point of spending years isolated from people, isolated from the world, isolated from everyone and everything and doing nothing but training day after day after day? Wasn’t that the entire point of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?”

“The _point_ was to teach you not merely how to kill people more effectively, but to teach you respect for the power you now wield.” A bitter note crept into Hiko’s voice. “The power of a great swordsman comes only through years of rigorous training, discipline, self-sacrifice, and pain, so that once mastery is attained, he has paid a great price for his power.”

He had made a terrible mistake.

Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “But the men who use you as their weapon now have paid no such price. They have never known the years of sweat and blood that you have, and they have no respect for the power of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. They see it as nothing but a means to an end, and because of that they cannot help but abuse its power. And in allowing yourself to be directed by them, you have abandoned the principles of the art.” 

He had made a terrible mistake in coming back.

“The ‘entire point of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu’ - ” Hiko spat out his words as though he couldn’t bear the taste of them, “- has escaped you.”

Enough. 

He had to leave. Both of them - he and Tomoe - had to leave. They’d figure out the rest later, but they couldn’t stay there a moment longer. 

_Enough._

“Fine.” Kenshin grabbed his sword from the side of the shed. “Fine, it’s escaped me. I accept that.” He turned to go - and was immediately hit with the scent of hakubaikou. 

Tomoe stood a few shaku away, hands clasped in front of her, an unreadable expression on her face. 

Kenshin froze.

“I’ve made lunch.” Her eyes rested on Kenshin’s face for a moment or two, then traveled over to Hiko’s. “If you’re hungry.”

Of course Tomoe would have heard the argument in its entirety. The shed was right next to the hut, after all, and neither of them had made even the slightest attempt to moderate their tones. 

Kenshin closed his eyes and took a breath. He didn’t speak until he was certain he could do so without anger marring the edges of his words.

“Yes. Thank you,” he said quietly. “We’ll be right in.”

\---

Tomoe was a very good cook, and if Kenshin had been in a better mood, he would have been able to appreciate it far more. After three days of barely eating and two meals of plain ochazuke, freshly grilled fish was a very welcome change.

As it was, he ate in tense silence.

“If we’re going to be staying here for a while,” Tomoe said after the silence had stretched on to the point of real discomfort, “I’d like to have some daikon. The fish doesn’t taste right without it.”

“There’s daikon,” Kenshin said instantly, then frowned. 

He had cultivated a small garden. Mostly daikon radishes, yams, and carrots, but Kenshin had tended to it carefully over the years and it had always resulted in a surplus of vegetables. Nothing elaborate, but he had never gone hungry on Mount Atago either.

He shot a glare at Hiko. “You let the garden go to weed?”

“No.” Hiko tore away a piece of fish with his chopsticks, much more savagely than was necessary. “You did. The garden was your responsibility.” His voice had a distinctly sour tone. “Which you turned your back on, along with all your other responsibilities, as I recall.”

Kenshin refrained from snapping his chopsticks in half, but it was a very near thing.

The tense silence descended upon them again, and again Tomoe was the one to break it.

“Perhaps now that we’re here, you can begin it again?” She turned to look at Kenshin. “You never told me that you knew how to tend a garden.”

“It never came up.” He shoveled a heap of rice into his mouth, mostly to refrain from having to make any further conversation.

“I suppose the pair of you will have ample time to talk about everything that hasn’t come up yet.” Hiko looked at Tomoe as he spoke, not sparing Kenshin a glance. “As you said, Tomoe-kun, you’ll be staying here for some time.”

“We never discussed how long we’d be staying here,” Kenshin said flatly. “We wouldn’t want to overstay our welcome.”

“You must know,” Hiko said, still addressing Tomoe and never letting his eyes so much as flicker in Kenshin’s direction, “there’s no way for you to travel to any other safe place. Not now, and probably not until the war ends. And as this is the safest place you can possibly be…” He shrugged and returned to his fish.

“And we thank you again for your hospitality, Hiko-san.” Tomoe inclined her head politely.

Kenshin glared into his rice bowl.

Fine. 

They would talk later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> With thanks to my enthusiastic beta reader, an_earl, who well and truly does leave the *best* notes that often manage to be both perceptive and hilarious. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Feedback is the bread of a writer's life. I've loved the chapter 1 comments I've already received! Very heartening, especially when I've made the jump from a juggernaut fandom like the MCU to a smaller, yet beloved fandom like Ruroken. Comments, kudos, and saying hi are all greatly appreciated and warmly welcomed. You can also come say hi to me on tumblr @ frostyemma.


	3. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was surreal, she found herself thinking suddenly, to be cleaning vegetables in the kitchen of a single-room hut on the mountainside, talking to the most feared hitokiri in all of Japan - who also happened to be her husband of less than a week - about the garden he was hoping to plant.
> 
> He would make it work, he said. She wondered how she would be able to make anything work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY OF TERMS  
>  _Daisho :_ sword set consisting of a katana (long sword) and wakizashi (short sword)  
>  _Bakufu :_ Tokugawa government  
>  _Zori :_ sandals, can be made of straw, cork, or wood  
>  _Ochazuke :_ green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
>  _Genpuku :_ a boy’s coming of age ceremony, occurring between the ages of 11-21  
>  _Bokutou :_ wooden practice sword

_“You sought us out for a reason, girl.” The muscular man with long white hair folded his massive arms and fixed his eyes on her._

_“Any business you have with the Yaminobu is something for all of us to hear.” The short and slender man with the constantly twitching hands leered at her._

_“We are the hidden hands of the Tokugawa.” The heavyset man with the prominent jaw spoke in a soft voice._

_“And our business is not the concern of outsiders.” A hollow-sounding voice echoed from somewhere above them. None of the men in the room had opened their mouths._

_“I…”_

_Tomoe clasped her hands tightly together to stop them from trembling. She wished she could have done something similar with her knees._

_“My…”_

_She could imagine Kiyosato-sama, lying butchered in the street, the straw mat drawn over him to prevent her from seeing the ghastly wounds, his blank and staring eyes, the look of pain and terror and regret that would never leave his face, the blood, so much blood…_

_“Hitokiri Battousai…”_

_The ghostly image of the man who had been responsible, the towering monster with flame-red hair and knifelike teeth, who killed men simply by looking at them, the demon who had killed the only man she had ever loved, the only man who would ever love her…_

_“Battousai?” The white-haired man looked around at his companions before returning his gaze to her. “What of him? How do you know that name?”_

_“He killed…” She swallowed, fighting back her fear and her rage and her crippling self-loathing. “My fiance.”_

_The men exchanged significant looks. Tomoe looked up at last, unshed tears shining in her eyes, her face a mask of defiant anger._

_“I want to help you kill him.”_

**Founding year of Genji  
(the following day)**

Returning to herself, Tomoe saw that her hands were clenched so tightly around the bowl she had been washing that her fingers had turned white. She breathed deeply, felt her shoulders shake as she tried to restore calm to herself, and forced herself to continue the washing-up from breakfast.

She had not expressly given Hiko-san a list of kitchen necessities and sent him down to the village to bring them back - she was under the impression that no one could send the imposing man anywhere - but he had gone nevertheless. Kenshin was outside, attending to whatever chore he had set himself that day.

Now she was alone in here with her memories.

Her chest tightened again as she wondered what she was going to do. It had all seemed so clear when she had first met with the Yaminobu, but it had unraveled spectacularly once she had set eyes on Kenshin. He had been a confusing young man from the start, so unlike anything she had imagined him to be. 

He was hardly the towering monster he had been described as - indeed, at first glance he might have been mistaken for a girl if he had not been wearing daisho - and he had shown himself to have strong morals that night when she had first met him, deriding the ‘false revolutionaries’ and preventing the drunken brawl they had seemed so keen to start.

And yet…

She had only fleeting images of watching him cut down the masked assassin that night. She had been more deeply drunk than she could ever remember, and she supposed she might have imagined what she had seen. But the sight of the man’s body splitting apart in midair, the blood bursting out to mingle with the raindrops and shower the entire street, was burned everlastingly into her mind.

He was dangerous, of course. But she did not hate him. And for that, she was beginning to hate herself again.

How could she have married the man who had murdered Kiyosato-sama?

The night when Kyoto had burned, she had been at the inn while he had been out fighting against the twenty-eight thousand soldiers sent by the Bakufu to crush the Ishin Shishi. As the chaos had raged around her, she had been terrified that either the soldiers or the fire would be the last thing she would ever see.

But he had come for her that night. Taken her from the inn and escorted her through the streets (better not to think about all the men he had killed that night to protect her) and fled the burning city with her. They had meant to go to Otsu, but they had wound up here instead.

As husband and wife.

She returned to the dishes with another shaking sigh.

The door to the hut slid open and Kenshin stepped inside. He was caked in mud and a fine sheen of sweat, yet had an oddly satisfied expression on his face. Especially when he presented her with-

“Daikon.” He offered her two large radishes. They hadn’t been cleaned yet, but they looked healthy and quite edible. “He might have let the garden go to seed, but he didn’t kill it off entirely.”

Tomoe’s eyes refocused yet again, and a small smile came unbidden to her face as she took in the sight of her filthy but triumphant husband.

He was her _husband._

“He’ll be upset,” she said, the small smile still in place as she came toward him to take the radishes. “Daikon was one of the things I had on the list.”

He made a dismissive sound and shrugged. “I’ll bring you a few yams later too. We might even have some carrots.”

“Are you going to do that today?” She began to clean the radishes, her eyes moving over his muddy clothes. “Because if not, you and your clothes are both in need of a wash.”

He nodded. “I’ll dig up everything that’s salvageable and maybe I’ll plant some of what’s brought up from the village.” He pushed a dirty hand through matted hair. “I’ll make it work.”

It was surreal, she found herself thinking suddenly, to be cleaning vegetables in the kitchen of a single-room hut on the mountainside, talking to the most feared hitokiri in all of Japan - who also happened to be her husband of less than a week - about the garden he was hoping to plant.

He would make it work, he said. She wondered how she would be able to make anything work.

“I have something else for you,” he said suddenly. “Have a seat.” 

He zipped out of the hut without any further explanation and returned just as she was seating herself on the edge of the raised wooden floor. He had a pair of straw zori in his hands. 

“I had to reweave them a bit, but they should work.” He knelt down in front of her and gestured to her lacquered wooden zori. “May I?”

“Please,” she said gratefully, holding out her feet. The wooden zori had become loathsome to even look at after the pain they had caused her feet during the days of their escape, and she had found herself thinking several times that she would have been happy simply to hurl them off the side of the mountain but for the fact that she had no other shoes.

He must have known that. And he had found a pair of zori somewhere and painstakingly rewoven them for her, so that she could be comfortable.

He was a very complicated man.

Gently, he removed her wooden zori, set them aside, and slid the straw zori onto her feet. They fit perfectly, and she felt compelled to wiggle her toes experimentally.

He looked up at her, a small smile flitting across his face. “There.”

“Have you been looking that closely at my feet, then?” She couldn’t help but tease. “That you could make me a pair of shoes that fit so perfectly without my having to try them on?”

“What? No - _no._ ” She watched as his face flushed nearly the same color as his hair. “We’ve just… we’ve been around each other for months and…” 

It was somehow so adorable to watch him flounder that she couldn’t keep the small smile from stealing onto her face. She waited a moment, enjoying his confusion, before coming to his rescue.

“They’re exactly what I needed.” She inclined her head toward him, the tiny smile still in place. “Thank you.”

He smiled tentatively, then abruptly stood up with a sigh. “I should get back to the garden. If we’re still here when autumn comes…” He shook his head. “Well, I want it ready.”

“Won’t we be?” 

She glanced at him, a sudden stab of concern rising in her chest. From everything that she’d overheard when he and Hiko-san were arguing - and it had been quite a bit; neither of them seemed to have been concerned with keeping their voices down - Kenshin wanted to leave as soon as possible. Hiko-san and he had apparently had a terrible falling-out, and there were clearly still hard feelings about it, but she believed Hiko-san when he said that there was no other safe place right now.

And knowing that both the danger of the war and the far greater danger of the Yaminobu still lurked outside this safe haven made her reluctant to even consider leaving it.

“After all, your shishou did say that this is the safest place to be.”

His gaze darkened. “He says a lot of things.”

Well, at least he hadn’t insisted on correcting her to have said ‘ _former_ shishou’. She supposed that was something.

“But we talked about this at the shrine,” she said quietly, standing up and taking a step towards him. The new zori felt soft and comfortable on her tender feet. “We tried to think of other places to go, and neither of us could come up with a single one.”

Another sigh. “I know.” 

The more she thought about it, the less she actually wanted to ever leave this mountain. On the mountain was a simple and quiet life. A life with her husband and his mentor. A life where they could plant a vegetable garden and she could commandeer the kitchen and Kenshin never had to wield his sword again. 

Off the mountain, in the outside world, was the war and the Yaminobu and her dead fiance and the house in Edo where her father sat and buried himself in his books to escape the pain of his shattered life, and where her brother grew angrier and angrier with every passing day until she could no longer recognize him, and…

She bit the inside of her lip to bring herself back to her senses before she could tumble headfirst into that black pit.

“I like it here,” she said simply.

He actually raised his eyebrows at that, but didn’t ask her why. He so rarely asked anything of her at all, and she was torn between wishing he would and hoping he never would. 

Instead, he cocked his head slightly, frowned, and said, “He’s back.”

Tomoe headed outside, Kenshin right behind her, in time to see that Hiko-san had just crested the hill and come into sight, his long white cloak snapping in the breeze, a carrying pole over one massive shoulder and a new sake jug swinging from his other hand. He walked easily up the mountain path carrying that heavy load, his tall black boots finding purchase on the rocky trail in the way that Tomoe’s wooden zori had not. He looked every inch the sort of man who would always be at home in the wild - the sort of man whom everyone would afford a wide berth in a city.

She noticed almost as an afterthought that he carried a sword in a plain and unadorned wooden sheath.

“I see you’ve been hard at work,” he said to Kenshin as he unshouldered the pole and carefully set it down on the ground beside him. “Is there any hope for the vegetable garden, then?”

Kenshin nodded. “It’s salvageable, and I can mulch the rest.”

“He even found me two daikon radishes.” Tomoe did not know why she felt the need to put this in, but perhaps it was to say something in praise of Kenshin. “I was surprised at how large they were.”

Kenshin glanced at her. “And there will be a few yams later. Maybe a carrot or two.”

“Carrots.” Hiko-san appeared to think for a moment. “Yes, I recall there being carrots at one point.” 

Kenshin opened his mouth, seemed to reconsider, and frowned instead. 

Hiko-san stretched and gestured at the full baskets on the ground. “Well. I’ve brought salt, miso, soy sauce, rice, and everything else on your list.” He cocked an eyebrow at Tomoe. “I suppose you’ll want to direct me while I put it away, seeing as how you’ve entirely rearranged my kitchen?”

Tomoe froze for a moment, turning to Kenshin uncertainly, but Kenshin only shrugged, and she realized that Hiko-san was attempting to joke with her.

“The only thing I can’t move myself is the rice,” she replied with a slight bow. “Which means it is still where it always was. But you’ve done enough. Come inside and I’ll make you something to eat.”

Hiko-san hefted the laden carrying pole as though it were empty, picked up the large jug of sake, and headed into the kitchen, leaving Kenshin outside. And was it her imagination, or did Hiko-san throw Kenshin the sort of look meant to imply that she had manners, while her husband did not?

Still, she was grateful to him for bringing everything inside.

\---  
\---

Hiko set down the carrying pole carefully on the earthen floor of the kitchen and immediately set about putting away the rice. Tomoe had said she would put the rest of it away herself, but he supposed she wouldn’t mind the help if he was willing to give it. And besides, the truth was that he needed as much movement as he could get. The walk to the village and back at least gave him the opportunity to stretch his legs and work his muscles, while sitting up here and doing nothing more strenuous than lifting a sake cup to his mouth repeatedly gave him no opportunity at all. 

If he was not careful, he might allow himself to go to ruin just as Kenshin (and he himself, he admitted grudgingly) had let the garden go to seed.

He heard Kenshin tell Tomoe that he was going to finish his work in the garden, and as he poured the sack of rice into the storage barrel, he heard her footsteps coming into the house.

“Thank you again for making the trip.” She gestured toward the soaking bucket, where two very large daikon radishes waited. “And tonight, we’ll be able to have properly seasoned food for dinner.”

Tomoe seemed pleasant enough, and there was an air of refinement about her as well. Hiko wondered if she were the daughter of a samurai or possibly a merchant. The clothes she had worn on the journey were certainly of high quality and style, and her skin was too soft and unmarred to have been any sort of tradesman’s daughter. So what had led her and his idiot apprentice together?

“I needed the trip.” He waved off her gratitude, though he did smile as he returned to the carrying basket to help unpack the rest of the load. “So much so that when you inevitably discover something you’d forgotten to put on the list, I don’t believe I’ll raise a fuss about going down the mountain again.”

“We avoided the village on the way here.” She began putting away the rest of the supplies in the newly rearranged kitchen. “Is there much to it?”

“It’s hardly Kyoto,” he shrugged, “but it’s adequate for most things.” He looked down at his feet and snorted. “When I need my boots repaired, I can go there, but for new ones I have to go to Kyoto. I can have my sword sharpened there, but when I bought Kenshin his own sword, we went to Kyoto.”

She stilled for a moment, jar of soy sauce halfway to the shelf. An unreadable expression flickered across her face, and she set the jar in its place. “I see.”

“Do you?” Something in her voice alerted him, and he fixed his eyes on her. “Tell me what you see.”

“That the village is adequate for most things, though I’ve yet to see it.” Her face was a mask of inscrutable calm. She turned away and began preparing a bowl of ochazuke. “Perhaps we can all go down there together at some point.”

Hiko regarded her for a moment, his own face far from impassive. He had decided long ago- very probably when he was still a child - that concealing what he felt behind layers of politeness was foolish and unproductive. He had always said what he meant, and not bothered playing with innuendo or skirting the point.

Which was why he found it so irritating when other people did precisely the opposite. Particularly when they knew perfectly well what he was asking.

“You don’t like that I gave Kenshin a sword for his genpuku.” It was not a question.

She didn’t answer right away, choosing instead to meticulously prepare the ochazuke. Not only did she add the usual scoopful of pickles, she tossed in a pinch of the newly-purchased salt, some toasted sesame seeds, and a salted plum. (He had wondered why the plums had been on her shopping list; now he knew.)

Only after she handed him the bowl and a spoon did she say, “How old was he?”

“For his genpuku?” Hiko tore his eyes away from the food with some difficulty. If this was to be the new standard of eating now that Tomoe was in the kitchen, then he would absolutely refuse to let the pair of them leave the mountain. “Twelve summers.”

She gazed at him. “That is very young.”

“He was old enough to begin learning battoujutsu.” Hiko sat on the edge of the raised wooden floor, his boots resting on the packed earth of the kitchen floor, and took a bite of the improved ochazuke. It was good enough that he spent a long moment savoring it before continuing.

“He trained on bokutou, for obvious reasons.” Hiko swallowed and looked back up at her. “But to learn battoujutsu properly, he needed a real sword.”

She turned away and filled the cast iron teapot at the water bucket, then stepped out of her zori (straw, he noticed) and onto the wooden floor. She busied herself at the hearth for a moment, hanging the teapot and arranging the cups.

This was not a woman to be rushed through a conversation.

“Who taught you?” she finally said.

“My own shishou. Hiko Seijuro the Twelfth.” 

He did not like to think of his predecessor too often, for obvious reasons, and so he found he would rather explain the name than the man.

“In the Sengoku era, a man named Hiko Seijuro created a style of kenjutsu intended to allow a single warrior to fight against many adversaries, all of whom would be larger, stronger, and better armed. The result was Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, and every subsequent master of the style has taken the name Hiko Seijuro to honor him.”

She nodded, seemingly absorbing the information without comment until the teacups were arranged exactly to her liking. Then she looked at him. “And where is he now? Your shishou, Hiko Seijuro the Twelfth?”

Damn.

“Dead.”

_His shishou lay at his feet, a great slash extending from his right hip to his left shoulder, more blood than Kakunoshin had ever believed possible soaking the ground around him, and a look of incongruous peace on his face._

_“This is the fate of the master when the apprentice is ready,” the man had gasped as the life drained from him. “The true final lesson of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. That your own life is worth everything…” He smiled. “...and nothing.”_

Hiko frowned and ate another spoonful of the ochazuke. This time, however, he barely tasted it.

Wordlessly, Tomoe measured out the tea leaves - scoop by exacting scoop - and deposited them into the teapot. She replaced the lid on the pot and on the tea jar, before meeting Hiko’s gaze.

“How?”

In her eyes, he saw a depth of understanding and perception that he had not looked for. Indeed, he would hardly hope to find it in the gaze of many men older than him. And to see it in the look of a girl of only seventeen or eighteen summers was almost unnerving.

What had she seen, then, to give her the ability to penetrate so quickly to the truth?

“Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu teaches its wielder many secrets,” he managed in reply, outwardly imperturbable but quite off his guard internally. “But immortality is not one of them.”

She would have to be content with that nonanswer.

“I see.” She looked down into her lap, studying her hands. After a long moment, she said, “I’ve seen what he can do.”

“And that disturbs you?” 

Eager to abandon the topic of his former shishou, whose grave he had dug on the slopes of the high mountain outside Morioka in the far north - whose memorial tablet had never been carved, whose resting place had been marked with his own sword and nothing else, and whose true name he had never known - he plunged ahead. 

“I’m hardly surprised.”

“I find it hard to believe that any man could best him,” she said quietly. 

“If it were any man but me,” he replied, meeting her eyes and lowering his voice to match hers, “you would be correct.” A beat. “He never completed his training, after all.”

She gestured toward his bowl. “Don’t let your ochazuke get cold.” 

The comment was so incongruous that he could not help but think there was a great deal she was leaving unsaid. If she had indeed guessed the truth about his own shishou, did that mean that she had already inferred the truth about the culmination of Kenshin’s training? Or if she had not, was she far off from the discovery?

He had not minded the idea of joining his shishou in death; the knowledge that his life would end at the hands of his own apprentice one day had seemed to him a fitting exit from such a barbaric world as the one he had seen as he had wandered Japan after donning the cloak and leaving his old name behind him. And in Kenshin, he believed he had found the ideal apprentice: a boy of pure heart with a genuine desire to protect those who could not protect themselves and safeguard the lives of the common people. 

Leaving Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu in the hands of such a person had seemed right to him. He himself had never been able to do much more than slaughter the guilty; Kenshin might have been able to defend the innocent. In him, the ideals of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu might have been fully realized.

Except he had foolishly gone off to join the war, against Hiko’s repeated warnings to the contrary, and now he had returned as a hollow-eyed assassin with a heart full of bitterness and a sword drenched in the blood of both the guilty and the innocent. 

What salvation was there from that?

He felt Tomoe’s eyes on him and slowly ate another spoonful of the ochazuke.

“It’s quite good.”

“I’m honored you think so.”

She lifted the lid of the teapot, peered into it, and set it back in place. Her hands returned to her lap. The silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the scraping of Hiko’s spoon against the bowl, until abruptly Tomoe said:

“And if he never completes his training? Would it matter?”

He looked up at her, lowering the bowl and wondering whether she knew the full significance of the question she had asked.

“More than you might guess,” he finally answered. “And more than he will ever know.”

“Perhaps.” She said nothing until Hiko had finished the ochazuke. “Would you care for some more?”

“No.” He sighed as he handed her the empty bowl. “One bowl was plenty.” He paused. “Thank you.”

She took the bowl without a word, stepped back into her zori, and placed the bowl in the washing bucket. When she returned to the hearth, she again lifted the lid on the teapot, and this time must have approved of what she saw.

A moment later, she slid a steaming cup of tea toward Hiko, then poured a cup for herself.

When he had lifted the teacup to his lips, she said, “Do you regret any of it?”

He took a longer sip than perhaps he otherwise would have, if only to give himself time to consider her question.

Did he regret taking Kenshin in to begin with? Teaching him the deepest secrets he knew in an effort to craft a swordsman who could succeed where he himself had so often failed? Treating him more callously than was necessary only because he hoped to spare him the full brunt of the manner in which they would eventually part ways?

Or, perhaps, did he regret having become a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman himself? Had the knowledge truly been worth the price? Had he done enough with what he knew to warrant what he had lost in the process of learning it?

“I regret that he left before he was ready.” Hiko set down the teacup and sighed heavily. “I regret that I didn’t keep him here by force if I had to, until he had learned enough not to take the path that he did.”

“You taught a child how to kill.” She said the words very quietly. 

“Of course I did.” He looked at her with level and unblinking eyes. “Hasn’t he ever told you what happened to him before I found him? What was going to happen to him if I hadn’t come along when I did?” He stopped himself from rising to his feet. “How could I not teach him how to protect himself and those around him?”

She picked up her teacup, but instead of lifting it to her lips, she merely stared into its depths. After a moment, she murmured, “Justice so honed that even mad rage cannot confuse it.”

Hiko’s brow furrowed. There was obviously some sort of context for this saying, which he had never heard Kenshin or anyone else use. It sounded like the sort of half-baked, grandstanding jingoism that his idiot apprentice might have picked up from the supposed revolutionaries who had recruited him - and that was likely where Tomoe had heard it as well - but he couldn’t be certain.

“Come again?”

“In order to destroy this era, at the peak of its madness after three hundred years of Tokugawa rule, we too must call upon the madness that gives us strength.” She was most certainly quoting someone now, and a moment later, he had his answer. “Yoshida Shoin. Of the Shokason School.”

“Ah.” 

He’d heard of the school, naturally; it had flouted the traditional rules of such places by accepting students from every class and background. He respected their decision to do so, though his respect ended there. 

“Was one of his disciples the man who dazzled my idiot apprentice into volunteering to become a hitokiri?”

“You taught a child how to kill,” she said softly. “Perhaps they’re just using that madness to bring justice.”

Hiko snorted. “The madness is theirs, not mine.” He folded his arms beneath the cloak. “I taught Kenshin how to survive in a world that had lost its sanity long before either of you were born. They saw his skills and snatched him up as a greedy child would snatch a sweet. They had no notion of the consequences of what they would do.” He scoffed. “And neither did he, though he would have if he had continued his training.”

He paused, taking a moment to consider how much farther the world had fallen into decay since the day he had attempted to salvage it by adopting Kenshin as his apprentice. 

“And madness has never brought justice to this world.” He sighed. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Tomoe stared somberly into her teacup.

After a moment, she set the teacup aside, stood, and stepped back into her zori. “I’m going to see if my husband would like lunch. If you would be so kind as to catch more fish, I’ll prepare them for dinner.” She bowed quickly and left the hut.

Hiko remained in the kitchen for a moment, looking around him at the freshly-stocked shelves and the newly-imposed order that had come with the arrival of Kenshin’s wife. The young woman was far more perceptive than he had expected - certainly far more so than his idiot apprentice, anyway - and he wondered how much of Kenshin’s mind she had guessed.

And as he swept out of the house, the cloak swirling about his body, he wondered whether she understood more about Kenshin - or himself - than she had let on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Did y'all know yams are a famine food? Apparently during famine time, the Japanese would eat a lot of yams, because of how carby, filling, and easy to grow they are. On the other hand, carrots are something of a luxury. Definitely not famine food.
> 
> I know this because my wonderful, hilarious beta reader, an_earl, made it very clear that YAMS ARE FOR STARVING and "sweet, tasty" carrots are luxurious. Personally, I hate "sweet, tasty" carrots and would not have made this connection had I not been so thoroughly and repeated clapped at (but in a good way). 
> 
> Anyway, initially I had prioritized daikon radishes and carrots in Kenshin's garden, because they sounded much easier to grow. (The hell does this city slicker know?) I changed it around to radishes and yams, with carrots being the veggie that he made sound more tempting. So that's your Tokugawa Era history lesson for today.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I'm feeling something of a flow, so I'm going to TRY to update on Sundays and Thursdays. Don't like... quote me on that or anything (even though I just said it), but that's my plan for now. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Comments, feedback, kudos, and the like are what keeps writers going. Engaging with fandom is half the fun of this exercise, so don't be shy! You can also say hi to me on tumblr @frostyemma.


	4. Routines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My parents.” He said the words reluctantly. Slowly. He wasn’t used to talking about them, and it felt odd bringing them up in the summer sunlight, sitting on a rock next to his wife. “They were farmers.”
> 
> “Oh?”
> 
> The single syllable hung maddeningly in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY OF TERMS  
> Wakizashi : short sword, companion to katana (long sword)  
> Hakubaikou : white plum perfume   
> Onigiri: rice triangle stuffed often stuffed with plum, fish, or pickles  
> Daimyo : feudal lords who administered the domains, vassals to the shogun  
> Kinpira : popular stir-fried vegetable side dish   
> Shogi : Japanese chess, more or less   
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government

_Kenshin had barely spoken a word for the first two weeks after arriving on the mountain, which meant that Hiko heard the sound of his own voice a great deal more than he had gotten used to in the past several years._

_When directly spoken to, the boy would respond with a nod or shake of the head, or else with monosyllabic words spoken in a low tone._

_“Not yet. Your hands still haven’t healed. I’ll change your bandages before bedtime.”_

_Digging a field full of graves with his bare hands had torn the boy’s hands to shreds, and Hiko’s first priority had been to clean and bandage them. Of course, that meant that the boy could not do much of anything for that week - even feeding himself had been difficult - but Hiko had been adamant that he simply rest. A boy with crippled hands was hardly likely to be an adequate apprentice, after all._

_“If you’re still hungry, have another bowlful.”_

_The boy ate as though he had never been properly fed in his life, which was likely enough to be true. Hiko had wondered at first (after the initial scrubbing, when the odd color of the boy’s hair could no longer be explained away as filth) whether Kenshin’s red hair might have been the result of malnutrition. His bony frame and diminutive height certainly spoke of such, but Hiko had no clue from where the unnatural hue had come._

_“You sleep there, boy.”_

_One night, he had been awoken by an exaggerated trembling beside him and had risen to find that Kenshin had wet his futon. The boy had clearly been terrified of punishment, and Hiko bitterly reflected that he had very probably been raised to expect nothing else. He calmed Kenshin down, sent him to clean himself off, and helped him to turn over his futon so that he could return to sleep. The following day, the two of them had washed the futon and hung it up to dry. That night, after Hiko had blown out the lamp, he had said good night to the boy as usual._

_“Good night, Shishou,” had come the whisper from beside him._

_There had been worse beginnings._

**Founding year of Genji  
(a week later)**

Over the next week, Kenshin directed all of his time and attention to salvaging the vegetable garden.

He harvested what could be used, though some of the carrots had cracks running through them and most of the yams had been choked by weeds. A few of the carrots had attempted to seed, and he set those aside for later. He disposed of everything diseased and worked on mulching the rest. 

If he worked quickly enough, they could have cabbages by autumn. Perhaps some smaller carrots. 

If they were still there by autumn.

Best not to think about it.

Crawling around in a garden gave him far too much time to think. It was tempting - _almost_ \- to abandon the work, but what would he do in its place? Watch Tomoe work in the kitchen? Argue with his former shishou? Drink sake foul with the taste of blood?

_No._

He mulched vegetables. He mixed the mulch with straw to strengthen the compost. He paused for lunch and worked until the sun went down and didn’t think of his scattered compatriots or the traitor in their ranks or Katsura-san huddled in a straw mat with no viable place to run.

Did Katsura-san think he was the traitor now? He had disobeyed orders. He had certainly abandoned them - _temporarily!_ \- by not going to Otsu.

Best not to think about it. 

He went to sleep every night, sword in hand, his former shishou’s judgemental eyes on him but his caustic tongue mercifully silent. He waited every morning for his wife to wake up before starting his day. And he spent the day crawling around in the steadily-improving garden, summer sun hot on his back and sword waiting for him in the dirt.

Waiting for what?

He left his wakizashi in the house, next to Tomoe’s futon but not folded up in the blanket like she quietly did with her kaiken dagger every morning. The katana, however, came with him everywhere.

What was he waiting for?

He didn’t have any answers, but he could work the soil. They would have cabbages by autumn, and maybe that counted for something.

Maybe not, but what could he do?

He heard the muted scuffing of straw zori along hard-packed earth and knew Tomoe was approaching without having to turn his head or pause in his digging.

“I’ve brought your lunch out.” 

She came around to face him, and he sat back on his heels and looked up at her. She was dressed in the simple linen kimono that Hiko had found in the shed - though she had dressed it up considerably with her own obi and accessories - and the straw zori that Kenshin had made for her and was holding a flat dish of onigiri. 

Rural life seemed to agree with her.

“Thank you.” He wiped his brow, damp with sweat and streaked with dirt. “You didn’t have to though. I would have come in.”

“You’re filthy.” The corners of her mouth twitched in the suggestion of a smile. “And besides, now we can talk while you eat.”

She handed over the dish, and Kenshin breathed in the lingering scent of hakubaikou. Even on an isolated mountain, she smelled of white plum blossoms, and he… liked that.

He surmised that she would likely not appreciate if he ate his lunch while crouched in the garden like some sort of demented goblin, and so he moved out of the dirt and seated himself on a large rock.

Tomoe waited until he had situated himself and taken the first bite of onigiri - filled with salted fish and topped with sesame seeds, sweet and briny all at once - before seating herself next to him. 

He sighed in appreciation. “We eat so much better when you’re here.”

The corners of her mouth might have flickered in the slightest smile. Or he might have imagined it. “What did you eat when you lived here before?”

“Rice. Fish." He polished off one rice triangle and started on the next one, the pungent taste of salted plum filling his mouth. “Vegetables from the garden. Occasionally rabbit in the winter. But nothing like the way you make it.”

“Well then.” She kept her eyes on him as he ate, probably more hastily than he should have, but he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. “Clearly I’m needed here.” She glanced at the hut. “Your shishou seems to appreciate the food as well.”

_Former_ shishou.

“He would.” He started on the third, and regrettably final, onigiri, this one filled with soy sauce fish, tangy and satisfyingly rich. “I learned to cook from him, and he’s not creative about it.” He made short work of the onigiri and just barely refrained from licking his fingers. “Where is he anyway?

“He’s gone down to the village.” She held out her hand for the empty plate, and this time she definitely smiled a small smile. “To pick up the futon he had made for you.”

“Ah.”

Tomoe, meanwhile, was looking at the garden, still holding the empty onigiri dish. “You work the earth as though you know it very well.”

He followed her gaze. The garden still wasn’t much to look at, but it was getting there. At the very least, all the weeds had been cleared and any usable vegetables had been handed over to Tomoe. 

“My parents.” He said the words reluctantly. Slowly. He wasn’t used to talking about them, and it felt odd bringing them up in the summer sunlight, sitting on a rock next to his wife. “They were farmers.”

“Oh?”

The single syllable hung maddeningly in the air.

He tried to conjure up images of them in his head, but it had been so long ago and their faces had grown soft and blurry with time. He could remember snippets of songs that his mother used to sing by the hearth. He could remember his father’s voice, quiet and tired. Always so tired.

“Gone now,” he said quietly. “Cholera.”

Tomoe nodded once, slowly, and remained staring at the ground. “How old were you?”

“Six.”

Tomoe’s face remained impassive. “I was eight when my mother died.”

He looked at her and just barely fumbled the word out. “How?”

“Childbirth.” She remained staring at the ground, her eyes slightly out of focus and her voice toneless. “She had lost one child before I was born and three afterward. But she kept trying until the very end.”

His eyes widened. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked, but it was out in the open now, hanging in the air between them, and he had to say something.

“I’m sorry.” His tongue felt heavy and stupid in his mouth. “Were there… are there any others? Siblings?”

“My brother Enishi.” Her face seemed to contort for a moment, around her eyes mostly, but a moment later it was impassive once more. Her eyes, however, remained fixed on some point beyond the ground. “My mother never knew him. And my father...”

Kenshin waited. He didn’t know what follow up question he could possibly ask to that. Whatever she wanted to tell him, she would tell him.

“My mother meant everything to him.” Her voice seemed to grow fainter. “A part of him died with her, I think.”

He had nothing to say to that.

There was nothing to say to that, and so they sat together in silence, the summer sun beating down on their backs and the unfinished garden before them. He looked at his hands, filthy with dirt and sticky with salt and rice wine from the onigiri.

“The daimyo taxed us into starvation,” he heard himself say. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud at all. “There was no famine. The crops were healthy. The daimyo took most of it for himself and the samurai who served him.”

When he remembered his parents, he remembered the hunger. Night after night of too little rice in their bowls, of his mother giving him her share of the food, of going to sleep with gnawing pain in his belly and nothing except warm water to alleviate it.

“There was never enough rice. There was never enough… anything. People tried to hide food sometimes, and the samurai would cut them down and burn their houses.” He stared hard at his hands. “My mother would stew dandelions. Sometimes grass.”

“That…” Tomoe’s voice, hushed as it was, carried a distinct note of horror. “That’s terrible.”

He studied his calloused palms and flexed his fingers. His parents had been so physically weak, so bent and broken from constant hunger, and still they farmed the land every day and went to bed with grass in their stomachs every night.

“Cholera infected the whole village.” He whispered the words. “It took my parents very quickly.” 

Their skin had turned nearly blue. They had been wracked with seizures, with vomiting. He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory. 

“They were gone within days. Most of the village was gone within weeks.” Again he found himself staring at his hands. “I don’t know why I survived it.”

Tomoe placed a hand gently on top of one of his. “Was that when Hiko-san found you?”

“No.” He said the word more roughly than intended. “I was passed around from household to household for a bit, but people kept dying and no one could afford to keep me.”

Her hand was so smooth compared to his. So clean and… untainted.

“Shortly after I turned seven, the daimyo said I was bad luck. Said that he was going to cut me down where I stood, that maybe spilling my blood would stop the epidemic.” He let out a humorless bark of laughter. “He sold me to a slave caravan instead.”

Tomoe’s hand tightened convulsively on his, and that spurred him forward.

“The caravan was attacked by bandits, and everyone was killed. I was the last one standing, and he… he found me right before they killed me too. Told me he had taken revenge for me and that I should go to the closest village and tell them what had happened.” He took a breath. “And then he left.”

He could see Sakura-san’s lifeless eyes staring up at him. Akane-san’s. Kasumi-san’s. He could see the blood staining their kimono, staining the dirt beneath them.

“I couldn’t just leave them there,” he whispered. “So I buried them. All of them. The caravan, the slavers, the bandits. It took me days, but I… I couldn’t just leave them.”

“You were seven years old,” she murmured, clearly aghast. “Only seven.”

“Yes.” He turned her hand over and gently traced his fingers against her soft palm. “Had I been older… stronger… maybe I could have done more.”

“But…” She breathed out heavily. “You were only a child. You should never have had to experience that.”

He turned and looked at her. Studied her face for a moment. 

“That’s why I joined the Ishin Shishi,” he finally said. “So that people can live in peace. So that people can live their lives without fear or suffering or hunger. That’s why I’ve done…” He let out a breath. “Everything.”

Tomoe remained silent, her hand still in his. And for a long while, they sat there side by side, the half-tilled garden in front of them and the warm breeze occasionally blowing through their hair.

\---

Kenshin spent a long time in the bathtub after dumping bucket after bucket of water over his head and scrubbing himself meticulously clean.

For dinner, Tomoe had prepared grilled fish with grated daikon, miso soup, and carrot and daikon kinpira pungent with rice wine vinegar and mirin. It had been so good, Kenshin had barely touched the rice.

He wanted to feel the softness of her hand in his again. He wanted to take her for a walk, maybe show her the waterfall or the small shrine further up the mountain. He wanted to sit with her, enjoy the feel of her next to him and the scent of hakubaikou on the air.

Maybe when the garden was finished.

He slipped into a clean yukata and combed out and tied up his hair. When he returned to the hut, Tomoe and Hiko were sitting by the hearth, drinking tea. Three futon had been laid out, and Hiko threw him a _look_ but didn’t say anything. 

Tomoe set her teacup down. “It’s unfortunate we don’t have a shogi or go board.”

“I suppose I’ll have to inquire about one next time I’m in the village.” Hiko drained his teacup. “If it’s not too expensive, I can bring one back.”

Kenshin sat down at the hearth. Tomoe poured a cup of tea and slid it toward him. “You wouldn’t like shogi or go.” He threw Hiko the same look. “You aren’t guaranteed a win there.”

“If I’m playing against you, I certainly am.” Hiko cocked an eyebrow and refilled his own cup. “Considering that they’re both games of skill, where chance has no effect.”

Kenshin glowered into his tea. He had walked into that one. 

Tomoe merely sipped her tea and said, “Hanafuda cards are also good. So many games in one simple deck.”

“Simple is good.” Hiko let his eyes linger on Kenshin for perhaps a moment longer than necessary.

Kenshin worked very hard to ignore him. He took a pull on his tea, scalding tongue be damned. 

“At any rate.” Hiko blew the steam from his own tea. “How do you like your new bed? It’ll certainly be more comfortable than the wall.”

“Certainly.” Kenshin cradled the teacup in his hands. “Much appreciated.”

\---

That evening, he tried to sleep in the futon. He really did.

He went to bed at the same time as everyone else. He set his sword down next to the futon, slipped under the blanket, and settled onto the mattress. It was all very soft and comfortable. 

It wasn’t like he had never slept in a futon before. The futon Tomoe currently slept in had been his, after all, and this new one was of high quality. He’d have to thank Hiko properly in the morning.

But every time he closed his eyes, he heard footsteps.

Shadows shifted and moved beneath his eyelids.

Floorboards creaked, every breath was hot in his ears, the leaves slapped together, and the cicadas screamed, and all of it drew closer and closer and-

He sat up and gasped for breath, the blanket was tangled around his legs, and he was out the door suddenly, sword in hand, because he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe-

Footsteps behind him.

He whirled on instinct, the shadows closing in on him now even in the open air, the blade clearing its sheath as he pivoted in battoujutsu stance and whipped the sword across in a blinding arc that had never missed, would never miss, would never fail to kill -

The blade met another with a high, ringing note, and suddenly his sword was being pushed back, pinned against his chest by arms stronger than his own, and a voice was booming in his ear.

“...a nightmare, boy. Wake up, do you hear me?”

The shadows melted away.

Hiko stood in front of him, their blades locked. He had drawn his sword only part way out of its unadorned wooden sheath, but he had blocked Kenshin’s swing as perfectly as he had ever done.

“I said wake up.”

Kenshin’s eyes widened. His breath caught in his throat. He backed up a step and turned away, chest heaving and ears ringing. 

Why had he done that? What the hell was wrong with him?

What if it had been Tomoe?

That last thought pulled him up short. He nearly gagged.

“Good.” Hiko pushed his blade fully back into its sheath with a ringing snap and gestured at the still-naked blade hanging from Kenshin’s suddenly limp hand. “Now put that thing away. It’s a good thing I was the one who came out here after you.”

His stomach churned. He tasted bile, and staggered forward a few steps, certain he would vomit. 

Wordlessly, he resheathed his sword.

“Is this why you haven’t been letting yourself sleep properly?” Hiko’s voice came closer behind his left shoulder. “Why you barely manage to doze and you don’t lie down? Because you’re afraid to dream?”

The ground was cold beneath Kenshin’s feet. It took him a moment to realize he was barefoot. 

“I don’t know,” he said tonelessly.

Hiko was silent for a long and seemingly accusatory moment.

“You’re not sleeping with that thing anymore,” he said flatly. “You’re putting it up in the rafters at night. The wakizashi as well.”

“That’s not…” Kenshin swallowed. His stomach still churned. 

“Not what?” Hiko’s voice carried a distinct note of impatience. “Not necessary? If you can’t even tell what you’re aiming at anymore, then it most certainly is.”

Kenshin closed his eyes. Took a breath and forced the word out. “Safe.”

“Safe?” Hiko put a hand on Kenshin’s shoulder and spun him around. “Listen to me, boy. And listen well.”

He glared down at him. “No one can come up this mountain without my knowing about it. No one can approach this house unless I allow it. And you know just as well as I do that you are far from the most dangerous man here.”

His eyes lost a fraction of their hard edge. “So lay aside your ideas of protecting anyone with your sword. At least for the time being.”

Kenshin’s eyes found the ground again. His insides clenched, and again he was afraid that it would all come spilling out, wasting the careful dinner that Tomoe had made for them.

_Tomoe._

What if it had been her?

Kasumi-san’s dead eyes stared up at him. Akane-san’s. Sakura-san’s. Hollow eyes and gaping mouths beneath pools of blood and dirt.

What if it had been Tomoe?

“Fine.” His voice sounded faraway in his ears.

“Kenshin.” 

Hiko’s voice was sharp, like the snap of a whip, startling him back to his senses. Looking up once more, he saw a look of piercing intensity in his shishou’s - _former_ shishou’s - eyes. 

“You can’t continue going without proper sleep. It will drive you insane more quickly than anything.” He paused and looked appraisingly at Kenshin. “How long have you been preventing yourself from sleeping properly?”

“I haven’t been-” Kenshin cut himself off. Shook his head. “I don’t know. A while. It comes and goes.” 

He sank down heavily on a fallen log that they had long since used as a bench. It had been there when he first came to Mount Atago all those years ago. 

“It’s not about dreams,” he continued. “It’s not about…” 

He couldn’t find the answer.

“It’s about never letting your guard down.” Hiko did not phrase it as a question. “It’s about having put yourself into a situation where the threat of death constantly surrounds you, and so you sleep with your back to the wall so that no one can come up behind you. You sleep wrapped around your sword so that you’re never without a weapon. And you never allow yourself to fall fully asleep, because that would slow your reaction time.” 

Kenshin opened his mouth to say… something. Deny it, possibly. Or at least push back on the idea. Something.

He couldn’t find the words.

\---  
\---

“You always did have a talent for making remarkably poor choices.”

Hiko looked down at Kenshin, who seemed to sag on the log bench in the aftermath of his nightmare and their brief clash of swords. The boy still held his sword loosely by the sheath, and Hiko toyed briefly with the notion of simply taking it from him. Putting it up in the rafters himself, simply to make his idiot apprentice confront his own paranoia. But he hardly wanted to provoke another confrontation, or push Kenshin into an even more fragile mental state than he was already in. And so the sword remained where it was.

He would not allow Kenshin to sleep with it again, however.

“You’re not down there anymore.” Hiko’s eyes bored into Kenshin’s. Piercingly, unwaveringly, until he was certain it had become almost painful for his idiot apprentice not to look away. “Coming up here, away from the war, was the first level-headed decision you’ve made in at least the past year.”

Hiko’s gaze flickered back towards the hut for an instant, and the hint of a smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth and eyes. “Well, perhaps the second.”

Kenshin followed Hiko’s gaze to the hut. An anguished look washed over his face, and for a moment, he looked as if he would be sick. 

The moment passed. He took a stabilizing breath and murmured, “I’m grateful for her.”

“As well you should be.” Hiko seated himself on the log beside Kenshin. “Eternally so.”

Granted, there were things about the young woman that made him slightly uneasy. She was much more insightful than might have been good for her - particularly concerning Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu - and once or twice Hiko had found himself thinking that she knew things she would not admit to knowing. But the fact could not be denied that she would be a very stabilizing presence for Kenshin, and for that alone, he was grateful.

Her cooking was a substantial bonus as well.

“How did you happen to meet her?”

Kenshin was silent for far too long before answering. Finally, slowly, he said, “She passed out in the street from too much drink. I brought her back to the inn with me. She had nowhere else to go, and the landlady needed the extra help, so she let her stay.”

Hiko waited for a moment with an arched eyebrow. When it became clear that no further explanation was forthcoming, he pressed on. “And what were you doing at the time?”

“Walking back to the inn,” Kenshin said shortly, then added, “Trying to.”

Hiko simply leveled a stern gaze at him until he continued.

Kenshin’s gaze darkened. “There was an assassin waiting for me. She happened by right as we were finishing up.”

Ah. Well, that certainly went a ways toward explaining Tomoe’s demeanor. A young woman who had watched a particularly efficient murder happen in front of her was likely enough to have strong feelings -

_“You taught a child how to kill.”_

\- about killing.

“She saw you kill him, then?” Hiko sighed. “I can’t imagine that went well.”

“No.” Kenshin stared intently into the middle distance. “But the bigger concern is that the assassin knew who I was.” His eyes hardened. “There’s a traitor in the Ishin Shishi. We still don’t know who he is.”

“Of course there’s a traitor.” Hiko rolled his eyes. He stopped short of flinging up his hands and heaving an exasperated sigh. “And of course you expected everyone in the ranks of the Ishin Shishi to have the same idealistic moral code as you, so the discovery that there was a traitor struck you as deeply personal.”

Kenshin snorted in disgust. “None of this concerns you. Don’t trouble yourself with it.” 

Hiko’s eyes narrowed into a gimlet glare. “I’m frankly surprised that you have the gall to say that to my face, boy.” He stood. “Of course it concerns me. Whatever moronic decisions you’ve made, you’re still my apprentice.”

“Was.”

Hiko’s brows knit. “You have begun the study of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. Once that happens, you are either an apprentice or a master. So which one are you, boy?”

“I’m a hitokiri for the Choshu Ishin Shishi,” Kenshin said flatly. “I don’t think I get to call myself anyone’s apprentice anymore.”

Hiko suppressed a wince. Still, he supposed it was the next best thing for Kenshin to admit it rather than hiding behind euphemisms and half-truths.

“Are you claiming to be a master, then?” He glared down at his idiot apprentice, who clearly would never learn even the simplest of lessons he had to teach. “Defeat me and I will agree.”

Kenshin narrowed his eyes. “That is not what I said.”

“You said you were no apprentice.” Hiko was beginning to tire of having to spell everything out so carefully. “I said that in Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, you are either an apprentice or a master. Make up your mind.”

“I’ll take the third option.” Kenshin stood, sword in hand, and made as if to head back to the hut. “We parted ways for a reason. I’m grateful you’re letting us stay for the time being, and I don’t want to keep arguing with you.”

“Why did you come here?” Hiko rested his sword on the ground and leaned on it as if it were a walking stick. “You must have known that I would ask these questions of you and demand answers. So why?”

Kenshin didn’t turn around to face him. “Would you have preferred I didn’t?”

Hiko closed his eyes and took a deep breath, hoping that it would lend him patience. “As I said earlier, it was the first halfway sensible decision you’ve made since leaving here. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

A long moment of silence stretched between them, then Kenshin turned and looked at him.

“We were supposed to go to Otsu. I...” A strange look passed over his face. “Disobeyed that order.”

Hiko looked at Kenshin critically for a time. His apprentice was an idiot, to be sure, but he had never been one to disobey orders without good reason. Oh, he had questioned everything, of course, but he had never refused to do what Hiko had asked of him. So…

“Why?”

Kenshin hesitated, then said slowly, carefully, “I had a terrible feeling about it.” He shook his head, and the words spilled out in a rush. “Kyoto had burned to the ground. We didn’t know who the traitor was. My superior told us to go to Otsu, that he had prepared a house for us there, but who else had prepared it? If he knew, someone else had to know, and I…”

His hand clenched around the sheath of his sword. He sucked in his breath. “It didn’t feel right. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly, but… it didn’t feel right.”

Slowly, Hiko nodded. At least the boy had obeyed his instincts on one occasion when it mattered. Still, if this was the sort of world he had willingly stepped into, it was no wonder that his paranoia had reached a level that would not allow him to sleep.

“I told you before, boy, that this was the only safe place for you.” Hiko looked Kenshin up and down, saw how exhausted and beaten down his apprentice was. “You’ll be staying here for the foreseeable future.”

Kenshin frowned, but then nodded. “Your hospitality is appreciated.” He turned and headed back toward the hut.

Hiko allowed himself a small smile as he followed Kenshin back inside. It hadn’t been outright capitulation - or even an agreement - but at least it hadn’t been a refusal. And what was more, Kenshin actually did place both of his swords in the rafters before going to sleep.

Against the wall rather than in his new futon, but still. Progress was progress, however incremental.

\---

As the summer stretched onward, they fell into a workable - though likely temporary - routine. 

Tomoe had fully commandeered the kitchen, and they were all much better fed for it. She had also drawn up a very precise list of fabric measurements and sewing supplies and sent Hiko down to the village to procure both. In the evenings, she began working on kimono more suitable for long-term stay on Mount Atago.

Kenshin continued to work on the garden. He had salvaged the last of the vegetables, reseeded the carrots, and prepared the soil for cabbages, before turning his attention to constructing the garden’s cold frame for winter. He took turns with Hiko catching fish every day, which were handed over to Tomoe, and also helped her with the laundry throughout the week. 

He continued to sleep sitting against the wall, disdaining his new futon. He had not had any more nightmares (though Hiko suspected that this was because he never fell into a deep enough sleep to dream) and his swords remained in the rafters every evening, but Hiko began to wonder how long it would take for him to be ready to sleep properly again.

Kenshin also largely avoided interacting with Hiko in any way that exceeded fundamental politeness.

One evening, after another of Tomoe’s excellent dinners of grilled and seasoned fish, Hiko brought out the shogi board he had bought in the village earlier that day. The three of them played several matches over constantly-refilled cups of tea. Hiko and Kenshin were merely passable at the game, but Tomoe turned out to be an excellent player.

“How do you keep doing that?” Hiko demanded after his third consecutive loss to her. 

“My father taught me to play when I was young,” she replied calmly, resetting the board so that Hiko could play against Kenshin. “He was very good, so I had to improve in order to make it worthwhile to play against him.”

Kenshin took his seat opposite Hiko, and as they tossed up for first play, Hiko eyed his apprentice.

“Everything is still chaotic down in the countryside,” he offered as he waited for Kenshin to make the first move of the game. 

Kenshin kept his eyes trained on the board. “Trying to disrupt me this early on so you can win?”

“I don’t need to disrupt you to do that.” Hiko cocked an eyebrow at his apprentice. “I’ve been watching you play.”

Tomoe sipped her tea. “Trying to disrupt your opponent is improper shogi etiquette.”

“I’m not disrupting him.” Hiko blew the steam from his own tea. “Though his play might improve if I did. I’m simply discussing what I saw and heard in the village today.”

“Can’t help but notice you waited until now to bring it up.” Kenshin slid his first piece into play. 

“But now that you have brought it up…” Tomoe set her teacup down and looked at Hiko expectantly. 

“People are moving around a great deal after the fire.” Hiko sipped his tea and regarded her. “The roads are still crowded. The towns and villages as well. And there’s been a great deal of talking.”

Kenshin’s expression darkened, but he didn’t lift his eyes from the board. “About?”

“The Bakufu is stamping on the embers of the Ishin Shishi,” Hiko replied flatly as he turned to fix Kenshin with a level gaze. “They’re hunting down every radical they can find and forcing them to commit seppuku, if not outright executing them.”

Kenshin’s eyes widened considerably at that. He clenched at the fabric of his hakama, tightly enough that his knuckles turned white. 

“I should be there,” he said stiffly. 

Tomoe’s gaze dropped to the floor. Hiko, however, had to fight to keep himself from rising to his feet in exasperated anger.

“You absolutely should not,” he spat, glaring daggers at his idiot apprentice. “Unless you’ve suddenly decided that your wife is better off a widow after three weeks.”

Tomoe winced. Hiko pressed on.

“What exactly do you imagine you’d accomplish by strolling into the midst of an army who would like nothing better than to put your head on a stake?”

“This is stupid.” The words came out as no more than a rough whisper, then Kenshin was on his feet suddenly. “This is so stupid. We’re sitting here playing shogi and drinking tea, and the world is on fire around us, and we- we’re not-” He turned away. “I’m not-”

Hiko rose to his feet as well, the shogi board and his cup of tea forgotten. “You’re _not_ going down there, is what you’re _not_ doing.” 

Kenshin whirled on him. “You don’t know anything.” He was off the wooden floor, into his zori, and out the door in a flash.

The expression on Tomoe’s face betrayed nothing, but the slight tremble of her clasped hands gave her away. 

Hiko spared her a glance, as if to say that he would deal with her idiot husband himself, and swept out of the hut after Kenshin.

“Where do you think you’re going, boy?” He caught up to Kenshin in a few strides. Fortunately, he did not seem to have been trying to flee the mountain. Even more fortunately, his sword was still in the rafters for the evening.

“What’s it to you?” Kenshin paused at the edge of the clearing, but he could have very easily slipped into the woods in the darkness. He had grown up there, after all. “What do you care?”

Hiko seriously considered dealing his idiot apprentice a resounding slap across the face, but managed to rein himself in.

“I _care_ about whether you live or die, you unimaginable imbecile.” He stood toe-to-toe with his idiot apprentice, glaring down into his stubborn face. 

Kenshin glowered right back up at him. 

Hiko let his voice rise in volume, thundering his anger down on his idiot apprentice’s mulish head. “I have no idea where you came up with the notion that I might let you out of my sight.” 

“Probably last year,” Kenshin shot back, “when you told me I could leave.”

Hiko squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment and willed himself to have patience. Unfortunately, no man had yet been born whose will was strong enough for that task.

“It was meant to make you consider just how foolish a decision that might be.” Hiko’s voice was tight. He managed to keep himself from speaking through clenched teeth, but it was a near thing. “Clearly I should have made that more obvious.”

Kenshin’s expression darkened. 

“And equally clearly, I made a grave mistake in allowing you to actually leave.” Hiko glowered at him. “I shouldn’t have let you go then, and I’m certainly not going to let you leave again. Not when it’s clear to me that you would immediately put yourself into a situation that you’d never get out of alive.”

“And yet, here I am,” Kenshin snapped. “Alive. So either you have no faith in me or in your own teaching.”

“You’re not even listening to me anymore.” Hiko shook his head in near-disgust. “If you’d been paying attention, you’d know that I was talking about you going back down there when the Bakufu and the Shinsengumi are killing every one of your compatriots they can get their hands on.”

“And that’s why I should be down there.” Kenshin’s voice took on a hard edge. “Instead of staying up here, hiding while the world falls apart around us. I shouldn’t have-” He growled in frustration and turned away, pushing a hand against his forehead. “I shouldn’t have left them to die like that.”

“And what would you have done?” Hiko took a step toward Kenshin. “Fought the entire Bakufu by yourself?” He shook his head. “And how many deaths would that have made you responsible for?”

“It wouldn’t matter.” Kenshin said the words through gritted teeth. His shoulders visibly shook with tension and anger.

“Oh?” 

Hiko felt his insides churn as he realized yet again just how deeply the war had scarred his apprentice. And how deeply he himself regretted the mistake he had made in allowing Kenshin to leave.

“Then tell me,” he said, voice low. “How many have you killed since you left me?”

Abruptly Kenshin stiffened. “What kind of question is that?” He didn’t turn around.

“One that I expect an answer to.” Hiko glared at the back of Kenshin’s head. “How many?”

In truth, Hiko did not expect an answer at all. He remembered all too well the moment he realized that he had taken so many lives that he could no longer tally them. And that had been one of the hardest lessons he had ever had to learn about Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

“I don’t-” Kenshin’s voice trembled. He sucked in his breath. Waited a beat. “I don’t owe you answers.”

Hiko suddenly felt dangerously calm.

“Turn around.” His voice was as hard and cold as the edge of his sword. “Now.”

Kenshin whirled around and glared up at him, jaw clenched and eyes hard. Hiko met his gaze evenly.

“How many?” he asked again.

Kenshin shook his head. His voice took on a ragged, desperate quality. “I don’t owe you answers,” he said breathlessly. “You stayed up here, and I- I was trying to help people. I was trying to make a difference, I was trying to actually _do_ something.”

Hiko felt something twist in his gut at those words. He recalled dimly how he had once tried to do something similar - to improve the world with his sword, and to stem the rising tide of decay that was threatening to drown the people of Japan in its poisonous filth.

And he recalled how miserably he had failed. That no matter how many evil men he had cut down - and there had been many - their number seemed never to decrease. How he had finally come to the painful realization that the world would always be an awful place. How he had retreated more and more from contact with it, seeking only the purity of perfect swordsmanship and waiting for the inevitable point at which the world would fall into complete chaos.

Perhaps after the fires had burned themselves out, he had thought - perhaps when the dust had settled and the survivors began to struggle painfully back to their feet - perhaps then he could wield his sword to ensure that righteousness triumphed over evil.

Or perhaps he would be long dead by that time. Which was why he had chosen to train Kenshin. But the boy had refused to learn from his shishou’s mistakes.

“What difference have you made?” The words tasted bitter in Hiko’s mouth. “Count the number of people you’ve helped against the number you’ve killed. Tell me when you can’t bear to count any longer.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Kenshin inhaled shakily, but pressed forward. “It doesn’t matter what I can and can’t bear. It’s not about me. It’s never been about me. If I… if I can…” He trailed away and looked over Hiko’s shoulder toward the hut.

Hiko turned. Tomoe stood in the doorway, illuminated only by the moonlight that spilled down around her.

She had likely heard a great deal more than she wanted to hear. Likely she had heard everything. 

“Go inside.” Hiko gestured toward the doorway. If he couldn’t get through to his idiot apprentice, then Tomoe might be able to. “It’s late.”

“Whatever you say,” Kenshin said through gritted teeth, “ _Shishou._ ” He walked past him toward the hut.

Hiko watched his idiot apprentice go, feeling as though he deserved some sort of award for not dealing the boy a resounding box on the ear. Still, he mused as he headed back toward the hut himself, at least Kenshin had finally acknowledged that he was still his shishou.

There had been worse beginnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> As always, thank you to my beta reader, an_earl, who likes talking about Hiko, m-dashes, and briny foods. Not necessarily in that order. (Still don't get the m-dashes thing.)
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Yes, the daimyo really did tax rural Japanese peasants and farmers into starvation. This undoubtably helped radicalize people in the Satsuma and Choshu domains. And yes, historically people in the region did stew dandelions and grass to eat and drink water water (called "white tea") when there was nothing else. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Interaction with readers is probably my favorite part of posting my work, so don't be shy! Questions, comments, kudos, and just saying hello are all very much hoped for and appreciated. You can also say hi to me on tumblr @ frostyemma.


	5. Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he floundered like that, it was so easy to see him as nothing but a very young man. Not the horrible monster he was rumored to be, and not the terrifyingly efficient killer she had seen him to be, but simply a flustered young man trying to talk to a young woman.
> 
> He rubbed at his forehead. “I’m not… I’m not very good at this.”
> 
> Hardly knowing why, she reached out and brushed her fingers against his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY OF TERMS - (kind of a full one today)  
> Edo: the name of Tokyo before the Meiji Restoration   
> Nagajuban : Cotton robe worn under kimono   
> Hadajuban : Cotton or gauze undershirt and slip worn under nagajuban  
> Shoji : sliding rice paper door or room divider   
> Shogi : Japanese chess, more or less  
> Zori: sandals, can be made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Torii: gateway to a Shinto shrine  
> Kami : gods and spirits  
> Miko: shrine maiden, often the priest’s daughter or granddaughter   
> Genpuku : a boy’s coming of age ceremony, occurring between the ages of 11-21

_“I am destined to stand with you, no matter what.”_

**Founding year of Genji  
(A few days later)**

Tomoe found that she was beginning to resent the tension in the house.

Certainly it was a simple enough thing to _outwardly_ ignore it. She went about her daily chores, which took up far more of her time than they ever had in Edo. For one, there was no well for drawing water, which meant multiple trips to the river and back. (Even when Kenshin fetched the water for her, which was usually, it still took time.) Clothing seemed to soil much faster, and so nagajuban and other assorted underthings needed washing several times a week. And the one-room house, with the dirt-floor kitchen separated from the main living area by only a raised wooden floor and no shoji (“Like most farmhouses, really,” Kenshin had told her), needed constant, vigilant attention.

She rather liked her life on Mount Atago, but it was altogether different than anything she had experienced in her father’s house.

Except for the tension. There had always been an unspoken layer of tension in her father’s house, and now there was one in her new home as well. 

Oh, Kenshin and Hiko-san hadn’t argued since that uncomfortable night several days ago, nor had Kenshin worryingly threatened to leave the mountain. Rather, he continued to work in the garden, constructing what he described as a cold frame for the winter. Hiko-san alternated between heavy manual labor - collecting firewood, splitting logs, repairing the house, and other such chores - and making the trip down the mountain to the village when necessary.

In the evenings, she alternated between sewing her two new kimono and playing shogi with Kenshin and Hiko-san. No one argued.

No one _had_ to argue.

The tension could be cleaved with her kaiken dagger.

Though as she stood at the washing bucket in the kitchen the next morning, scrubbing dishes and putting together a mental tally of the tasks she needed to accomplish that day, she realized that the tension was not the only thing making life uncomfortable for her at the moment.

She had avoided dwelling on her complicated feelings toward Kenshin as much as she could, pushing intrusive thoughts to the back of her mind and determinedly focusing on anything else that might occupy her attention fully at any given time. But when her hands were unoccupied and her mind was left free to examine itself, unpleasant things came crawling to the forefront.

She had married Kiyosato-sama’s killer.

She had abandoned the deadliest group of assassins in the Bakufu.

She had fled her home and left her father and brother to who knew what fate.

These thoughts always brought a sickening, cold lurch to her gut and made her squeeze her eyes shut against the accusations her mind hurled at her. She filled page after page of her journal with bitter self-recrimination, lashing herself with her own words as though they were thin bamboo whips. And yet she could not escape the truth.

Her heart was cold and empty. It always had been.

"Tomoe?"

She gave a convulsive start when Kenshin appeared beside her suddenly and silently. Her heart hammering in her chest, she retrieved the bowl she had dropped into the bucket and tried to calm herself. 

He was almost unnaturally stealthy. Though, as the foremost hitokiri of the Ishin Shishi, he would have had to be. With all the practice he had had creeping silently through alleyways in the dark of night and skulking in the shadows to strike down his targets…

A sudden shiver coursed through her. She very nearly dropped the bowl again, only Kenshin’s hand shot out, almost faster than she could see, and steadied it.

“Careful.” A small smile flitted across his mouth. “He’ll be annoyed if we send him down to the village to replace the dishes.”

He was teasing her, she realized. And the fact that the hint of a smile came unbidden to her face at the sound of it simply made everything she had been trying to crowd out of her mind that much more confusing.

What did she feel for Kenshin, beneath all the layers of complexity?

“He might like the opportunity to show his annoyance,” she replied, returning the bowl to the water and continuing to scrub it. “Or he might welcome the need to walk down to the village again.”

“He’ll take any opportunity to show his annoyance.” Kenshin scowled. “We don’t need to break the dishes to prove it.” A beat, then, “Just trounce him again in shogi tonight. That’ll do nicely.”

He was teasing her again. 

She looked back down at the washing bucket, frowning slightly when she saw that there were not enough dishes remaining in it to occupy her attention long enough to work out the tangle of feelings in her heart and mind. Then again, she supposed that twenty full washing buckets would not have given her that sort of time.

“That shouldn’t be too difficult to do,” she replied. Hiko-san, after all, was nowhere near as accomplished a shogi player as her father.

Things had changed so much since the night she had picked herself up from the floor of her father’s house in Edo, grief-stricken, and begun the walk to Kyoto. Or perhaps - she set the bowl aside to dry and slipped her hands into the washing bucket again - the only thing that had changed was how well she knew Kenshin.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” he said easily. 

And somehow, that made all the difference.

“Or, then again,” he continued. “Do.”

She had known Kiyosato-sama since they had both been children, and yet she had been unable to show him the sort of affection that would have kept him in Edo.

Kept him alive.

Why, then could she feel herself wanting to show that kind of affection to Kenshin? She had only just begun to get to know him, and already she had thrown everything else in the world aside for him. And bizarrely, she somehow knew on some primitive level that, had she been given more time to consider what she was doing, she would have made the same choice.

She was broken. 

“Not broken,” Kenshin said. He was kneeling down, a dripping wet rice bowl in his hand. “Don’t worry.” He had caught it before it hit the floor.

When had she dropped it? How had she not noticed? Why could she not keep the inside of her own mind in order well enough to take in what was happening around her?

“I’m sorry.” She took the bowl from him, her tongue suddenly as clumsy as her fingers had apparently become. “I didn’t…” 

“It’s fine.” He stood and looked at her for a moment. “Nothing to worry about.”

Except there was. 

Her thoughts would not give her peace, and her heart was being pulled in so many different painful directions, and to maintain a facade of cool and distant composure was torture, and there were no household tasks that would distract her from it all forever.

“I need to be more careful,” she murmured.

“Well,” he started. Hesitated, then plowed forward suddenly. “Maybe you’ve been inside too long. You might need to get out of the house for a bit.”

She returned the bowl to the bucket yet again and let her hands rest on the wooden rim. “I might,” she said after a long moment. “If only so I don’t drop any more dishes.”

The small smile that crept into the corners of her eyes and mouth felt like relief.

He shrugged. “The dishes will still be there when you get back.”

“Back from doing what?” She dried her hands on a rough cloth hanging beside the bucket. “You sound as though you have something in mind.”

His eyes widened slightly at that. 

“No,” he said immediately, then, “Not exactly. Well, sort of. Maybe. Maybe a bit.”

When he floundered like that, it was so easy to see him as nothing but a very young man. Not the horrible monster he was rumored to be, and not the terrifyingly efficient killer she had seen him to be, but simply a flustered young man trying to talk to a young woman.

He rubbed at his forehead. “I’m not… I’m not very good at this.”

Hardly knowing why, she reached out and brushed her fingers against his.

“I’m not very good at this either.” She paused. “I’m not even sure what ‘this’ is.”

That brought a small smile out of him. He hooked his little finger over hers, just for a moment, before letting his hand drop.

“There’s a shrine,” he offered. “And a waterfall. And statues, and… things.” 

It was almost… endearing.

“Then you should show me.” She let the smile lurking at the corners of her lips and eyes creep out from its hiding place. “The dishes can wait.”

\---

The mountain air blew refreshingly past her face. A strand of hair escaped the ribbon at the base of her neck, and she tucked it behind her ear before falling into step beside Kenshin. He moved at a deliberately slow pace which she assumed was for her benefit, considering how painfully slow their progress up the mountain had been the first time, weeks ago.

How much had changed since then, both in the world below their little bubble of seclusion here on the mountain? And how much had remained the same?

They followed a well-beaten path that led alongside the river, followed it as the river grew ever noisier and more urgent in its movements, until after about ten minutes of walking, a singularly spectacular view met her eyes.

A single outcropping of rock, like a balcony without railings, thrust outward from what seemed to be a massive wall of water. The sound of it roared in her ears, the spray tinged the air with a damp, fresh scent, and the sight of it humbled her as nothing else she had ever seen had. Endless water cascading through the air to crash, foaming, onto the rocks far below would reduce anything dropped into the water to splinters in a matter of moments.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, feeling the somehow reassuring press of Kenshin’s hand on her arm.

Kenshin pointed down toward the basin, the water glistening in the sunlight. “I used to swim there.” 

She stared down into the basin disbelievingly. “How?”

“Usually I had been kicked into the water.” A frown tugged at the corner of his mouth. “It was always over my head, so sink or swim.”

She must have looked horrified at the thought of a ten-year-old Kenshin struggling to swim out of the seething pool beneath the waterfall, because Kenshin hastened to add:

“It was fine. I’m a fast learner.”

“I couldn’t go anywhere near that.” She eyed the foaming water warily. “I doubt I could even swim in perfectly still water.”

“We’ll go wading sometime.” He glanced at her. “It’s gentler downstream.”

Something he had said tickled at the back of her mind, and she frowned suddenly.

“You said you were kicked into the water?” Her eyes traveled up the face of the waterfall to land on the outthrust rock shelf. “Did you used to _train_ up there?”

There was something between horror and admiration in her voice.

His gaze followed hers. “Up there. Down here. All over the mountain, really.” 

She stood and marveled in silence for a long moment. And then, her curiosity - or it may simply have been her desire to know more about the early life of the man she had married - took hold of her.

“Tell me about it.” Her hand came to rest on his, which still rested on her arm. “About how you learned to… do all of it.”

“Practice.” He shrugged. “Just… a lot of practice.” His gaze drifted back down to the basin. “Every day, all day, from sunrise to sunset, and sometimes into the night, and no matter the weather.”

Tomoe imagined a young Kenshin, holding a sword far too big for him, standing hip-deep in snow as Hiko-san exhorted him to swing faster and harder. Or in the driving rain, as Hiko-san told him that only when he could cut a raindrop in two as it fell would he be allowed to go inside.

“And a lot of repetition,” he continued. “Endless repetition, no matter how boring. Or painful.” He frowned. “I don’t think the phrase ‘good enough’ exists in his vocabulary.”

“No,” Tomoe agreed. “He seems like an absolute perfectionist.”

“Yes.” Kenshin’s expression darkened. “He is.” He held the look for a moment, then abruptly shrugged. “Which is why I like watching you trounce him so thoroughly in shogi night after night.”

She felt the smile tugging at her once more and did not resist it this time.

“Well, not that I would ever say this to his face,” she said, her voice dropping conspiratorially, “but it’s not very difficult to do.”

He gave a startled bark of laughter at that, and she could see the genuine _delight_ in his eyes. “I would say that to his face. Oh, I would definitely say that.”

“Well, then.” She tightened her arm slightly in his. “I suppose I’ll have to start teaching you to play.”

“I’d be honored, but…” It was his turn to lower his voice, though he couldn’t keep the edge of a smile off his lips. “It would have to be in secret. For the eventual surprise trouncing.”

“Wouldn’t he suspect something?” She squeezed his hand gently. “If we were always off doing something secretive?”

His gaze drifted down to their hands for a moment, before traveling back up to meet her eyes. “Best to keep him on his toes, I think.”

She found herself suddenly unable to stop looking into his eyes. No longer the cold, hard, narrowed slits they had been the first night she saw him, or the night when they had fled Kyoto and he had cut a path through everyone who stood between them and escape, they had become large and earnest. 

And beautiful.

“I think so too,” she breathed.

He brought his other hand up to cover hers, fingertips tracing gentle swirls over her knuckles. “Okay,” he murmured. “Sounds good.”

Something about the way they were speaking, or perhaps about the way they were standing so close together, their hands entwined, brought a sudden flutter to her heart and a hitch to her breathing. But on the heels of that thrilling sensation came a wave of nerves that she could not explain.

“You…” She stepped back, her throat suddenly dry and her heart beating wildly. She still could not avoid meeting his eyes. “You said… something about a shrine?”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Sure. It exists.” 

A beat passed between them. 

Abruptly he seemed to come to himself, shaking his head and breaking eye contact. “Yes, there’s a shrine.” He stepped back, zori scraping against rock. “Let’s go see the shrine.”

\---

Past the waterfall, the slope of the mountain steepened considerably, and Kenshin had to help her negotiate a few points before they came upon a series of irregular steps. These had been created by placing cut logs on the ground, bracing them with boulders, and packing the hollows behind them with earth. The climb was much less difficult now, and she could manage on her own, but Kenshin still kept hold of her hand.

She did not complain.

In the near distance, she caught a glimpse of a massive wooden torii. The unpainted structure rose high above their heads, weatherbeaten but beautiful, and she could see a series of others as they drew nearer.

The wood-and-earth steps gave way abruptly to well-worn and much more even stone steps as they passed beneath the first of them.

“How many people live up here?” she asked, pausing to catch her breath. She had lost count of the number of stairs. 

“Just the priest and his family.” He smiled. “I don’t know how many kami live here though.”

She would have laughed if she’d had breath to spare. As it was, she simply shook her head at him and returned to the climb.

The shrine itself was an impressive wooden affair on a level foundation of stone. She could only guess how long ago it had been built - the stone platform and lanterns that flanked the main entrance appeared more weatherbeaten even than the massive wooden torii they had passed under earlier. Small carven statues of wood and stone stood at odd intervals along the path or off of it - animals and Buddha images - and nearly every tree they passed had been bound with sacred rope.

“It’s so lovely,” she whispered. It seemed wrong to raise her voice in such a tranquil place.

Kenshin hummed in response. His eyes were closed, his face tilted toward the treetops. After a moment, he murmured, “And peaceful.”

She wondered how often he had come here as a child. How long it had been since he last saw this place. Whether he had ever spoken to the priests or tenders of the shrine, and whether they knew who he had become and what he had done.

He looked so content, though, his face turned up to catch the warmth of the green-filtered sunlight, his eyes gently closed, his expression one of peace.

She found that she liked looking at him this way.

He glanced over at her, and heat flooded her cheeks. She had been caught staring, but all he said was, “Shall we explore?”

They strolled the grounds in what felt like companionable silence. The occasional breeze rustled the leaves on the trees and gently tinkled the delicate furin windchimes strung throughout the place. They passed only one other person, a miko sweeping the front of one of the smaller auxiliary shrines, and she nodded as they walked on by.

“Did you and Hiko-san used to come to this place?” she asked when they had reached the building at the rear of the shrine dedicated to the kami. “It feels…” 

She searched for a way to describe how remote the place felt, as though it were some island outside the world, separated from even the mountainside hut by a thick wall of utter peace and solitude.

“Separate, somehow.” She frowned. “If that makes sense.”

“It is separate,” he agreed. “Pilgrims come here. You’ll see them making the hike, especially in the autumn and spring. They come mostly for Obi Iwai or Omiyamairi.” He frowned slightly. “Maybe because they find the hike challenging?”

She looked at him, then just as abruptly looked away, her entire face warming this time. She wasn’t ready to think about any ritual meant to ensure the smooth delivery of a baby. And she certainly, most definitely was not ready to think about _bringing_ a baby to the shrine. Any shrine. Or any baby.

“But no, we didn’t come here often,” Kenshin continued. “I didn’t even have my genpuku here.”

The heat just as suddenly cooled from her face as she was reminded that Kenshin’s genpuku, at the incredibly young age of twelve, consisted of being given a sword so that he could learn the advanced techniques of the art which would enable him to become the most prolific hitokiri in Japan.

“That’s a shame,” she murmured.

He nodded. “It is more peaceful here, but the best swordsmith in the country lives in Kyoto.”

She gave a sort of mental sigh at the magnitude by which he had missed the point, but she rallied all the same.

“Perhaps we could walk up here more often now that we’re here,” she offered. “I’m sure it would be even more beautiful in the autumn, when the leaves have turned.”

She waited for him to protest the idea that they would even be on Mount Atago come autumn, but he merely nodded and said, “Most likely.”

The furin chimed gently on the breeze.

Kenshin seemed to study her for a moment. He hesitated, then reached out and brushed a stray tendril of hair, slightly damp with sweat, from her face.

The tip of his finger seemed to strike sparks where it touched the skin of her cheek, and for a moment, she felt a curious tightness in her chest. 

“I’m so glad you brought me here,” she whispered. And she wasn’t entirely sure whether she meant the shrine specifically, or the mountain, or perhaps something even more all-encompassing that she had no words for.

His fingertips lingered on her cheek, then slowly, gently traced over the shell of her ear. “I’m so glad you came with me.”

Did he mean the same thing that she had meant? Was she herself even sure what she had meant? And did it even matter when all that seemed important just then was the touch of his fingertips against her face?

“So am I.”

“Me too,” he breathed, which quickly turned into a huff of laughter. He dropped his hand and took a step back, smile tugging at his lips. “I told you, I’m not… very good at this.”

A slight smile worked its way onto her own face. She wasn’t much good at this either - though, now that she thought of it, her cheeks colored as she realized what ‘this’ actually was. 

Her _husband_ hesitated a moment, then offered a hand to her. “Shall we walk?”

She took his hand, her face growing a shade warmer (and likely redder) as she felt the touch of his skin against hers once more.

And, together, they walked.

\---  
\---

As the summer stretched forward, the weather grew brutally hot.

The cicadas buzzed so loudly during the day, they sounded as if they were screaming. Evening wasn’t any quieter; the crickets and frogs simply joined in, all of them complaining incessessantly about the unforgiving humidity.

Kenshin worked to expand the garden, though he wasn’t prepared to say if it was out of necessity or avoidance. He prepped the soil for cabbages and daikon radishes and for a cover crop of millet. The cold frame for winter - unthinkable now, in the heat - had been completed and set aside for later.

Maybe he should have been a farmer, but there was little point in dwelling on it. And anyway, he found his attention lingered in other places. 

Tomoe brought him cooled barley tea, brought him his lunch and sat with him while he ate, and always left the lingering scent of hakubaikou in her wake. 

White plum blossoms. 

He dreamed of that scent at night. Breathed it in during the day. Avoided sliding closer to her during the nightly shogi games - they all had their side of the board, including Hiko and the hearth - but it took a considerable amount of willpower.

They hadn’t found time to take another walk, but he thought about what he might show her - the area of the river where they could go safely wading, tranquil sections of the forest, paths lined with mossy jizo statues. 

Anything, really. 

“Did you fall asleep over there, boy?”

Kenshin started at that. Realized he had been leaning on the long handle of his gardening hoe and staring somewhere into the middle distance.

“I… no.” He snapped himself back to the present and turned. 

Hiko stood a short way off, a large bundle of firewood over his shoulders and his ever-present sake jug dangling from the fingers of his right hand. None of the branches were freshly cut; the forest was old and overgrown enough that firewood could be found in abundance on the ground. However, there were several pieces that would need cutting and splitting, and Hiko approached the scarred stump they used for that purpose.

It felt ridiculous, needing firewood when they were both dripping with summer sweat, but the stove and the hearth needed to stay lit.

“Where’s your wife?” Hiko asked by way of greeting, as he slung the huge bundle of logs and branches down beside the stump and headed towards the shed for the axe. “Inside, I hope; it’ll be cooler in the shade.”

“She said she was going to make mizu yokan.” 

The jellied red bean squares would not only take the edge off the miserable heat, but would also make a fine sweet dessert over shogi. It also gave Tomoe a reason to stay inside the relative coolness of the hut for a few hours.

Hiko made an appreciative noise in his throat and hauled one of the larger logs onto the stump.

“We never used to eat so well.” With a single well-placed blow, he split the log in half. “A woman who knows her way around the kitchen like that is a woman worth keeping around.”

With a little effort, Kenshin decided to graciously take that comment in the spirit of which it was meant.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We do eat much better these days.”

“As I said.” Hiko continued to chop the wood, hardly pausing as his brawny arms made short work of the task. “Marrying her was likely the best decision you could have made.” A tight smile. “Apart from coming back up here, of course.”

Kenshin watched him in silence for a moment, then shrugged and returned to tilling the soil. It was too blazingly hot to argue, and his mind wasn’t really on the garden or his shishou. He thought of Tomoe in the kitchen, carefully mashing the red beans into paste for their dessert.

“Still,” Hiko mused in an almost distracted-sounding voice that hardly betrayed any effort as he cut the wood, “she seems a touch out of place up here. How did you meet her again?”

“I told you.” Kenshin frowned and made a half-hearted attempt at refocusing on his work. “She passed out in the street and I brought her back to the inn.”

“After she’d watched you kill a Bakufu assassin.” Hiko chopped a log to length with a single stroke for punctuation. “And still she stayed on at the inn.”

“She had nowhere else to go.” Kenshin tried not to sound defensive about it, but it was true.

“Where did she learn to play shogi again?” Hiko upended one of the logs and prepared to split it. 

“Her father.” Abruptly Kenshin stopped tilling. “She told you that.”

“She did,” Hiko agreed. The axe hung poised in the air for a moment. “And yet she never mentioned where he is now.”

The axe came down, splitting the log into two perfect halves. 

Kenshin’s frown deepened.

Tomoe had mentioned a brother too - Enishi, was it? And that she was from Edo - she had offered to make Edo rice porridge and told him she had grown up there. And…?

So…?

“She doesn’t much like to talk about her family,” he said tightly. 

“I wonder why?” Hiko replied dryly.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Kenshin shrugged. Casually. “I don’t much like talking about my own upbringing either.”

“You’re incredibly ham-handed at this, boy.” Hiko shook his head and hefted the axe again. “I haven’t forgotten the subject at hand, and neither have you.”

“The subject is my wife,” Kenshin said sharply. “ _Shishou._ ”

“Another thing you haven’t forgotten.” Hiko smiled humorlessly but triumphantly. “But, more specifically, the subject is how little you still know about your wife.”

“We’re newlywed.” Just saying that warmed him. 

“Is that an excuse?” Hiko raised an eyebrow.

Kenshin just barely refrained from tossing the gardening hoe aside in frustration. “What are you getting at?”

Hiko sighed deeply and rolled his eyes. “That woman is an enigma-”

“That _woman_ has a name,” Kenshin cut in.

Hiko continued, unperturbed. “You married her without knowing who she is.”

“We know each other-” Kenshin started.

“The least you could do,” Hiko said as if he hadn’t heard him at all, “is find out the real answers to some of these questions.”

Kenshin gripped the handle of the gardening hoe, though he couldn’t say if it was to keep himself from flinging it or not. 

Finally he said, “What’s it to you?”

Hiko buried the axe in the stump almost casually and turned to face him, his cloak swirling.

“You’re my apprentice.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’ve already done considerable harm to yourself, and I’m interested in preventing you from doing any more.”

Kenshin barely - just barely - refrained from rolling his eyes, but it took a considerable amount of hard-won effort. 

Again his thoughts strayed toward Tomoe, painstakingly making mizu yokan - a process she said would take a few hours - so they could have something sweet and cool in the hot weather.

He was in no mood for his _shishou’s_ cold cynicism just then.

“I’m grateful for your concern.” He gritted the words out and made to resume tilling, though he knew he would get nothing done.

“But you don’t intend to follow my advice.” Hiko fixed his eyes on him in clear and familiar displeasure. “That’s hardly a surprise. When did you ever?”

The last few times they had argued, Tomoe had been caught unnecessarily in the middle of it, either because they had stupidly gotten into things while at the shogi board or because they had inconsiderately started yelling at each other while Tomoe was all of a few steps away in the house.

He wasn’t going to keep doing that to her. 

“Don’t worry, _Shishou_.” He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice, and he didn’t much care. He tilled the soil, though it amounted to poking at it uselessly a few times. “I fully intend to spend as much time as possible getting to know my wife.”

“I’m more interested in _getting to know_ why she decided to stay on with you in an inn full of revolutionaries after watching you kill a man in the street when she has a father on the other side of the country.” Hiko’s gaze bored into him. “And don’t tell me the same question hasn’t crossed your mind at least once.”

Of course it had crossed his mind, and more than once at that - despite Hiko’s insistence to the contrary, he wasn’t a complete idiot - but the idea of saying that aloud… to _him._

The words tasted like ash on his tongue.

And it was not as if Tomoe had _refused_ to talk about her family. She had told Kenshin about them, after all. And besides-

_No._

He wasn’t going to twist himself into knots thinking dark thoughts about the woman he had married. Madness waited down that path.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said quietly, but firmly. “Now let it go.”

\---

Mercifully Hiko did let it go.

For the time being, anyway. The man was stubborn to an infuriating degree, and Kenshin knew it was only a matter of time before the topic was brought up again. 

They ate a simple dinner of grilled fish, pickles, and rice. As Kenshin set up the shogi board, Tomoe served the mizu yokan with barley tea that she had left in a jar overnight to cool.

It was all… so good.

The next morning, he couldn’t help but linger after he had brought her fresh buckets of water to wash the breakfast dishes. There was the garden to continue to attend to, and certainly he could easily find other chores to do, but she was his _wife._

“It’s going to be very hot today,” he said pointlessly, just to give himself a reason to stick around. 

The cicadas were already screaming their frustration.

“I know,” Tomoe sighed as she plunged the first of the breakfast dishes into the washing bucket. “I’m going to bring you out a cup of cooled tea every hour.”

Her consideration brought a smile to his lips, but he didn’t just want to thank her and head out. He took a small step forward, breathed in the scent of hakubaikou, and let it wash over him for a moment.

“What if we…” He hesitated a moment, then plowed forward. “Do something else?”

A small spot of color bloomed in the center of each of Tomoe’s perfectly smooth cheeks. She turned her head to look at him, her hands still in the washing bucket.

“Oh?”

He watched her mouth form the word, then looked back up at her. She was wearing one of the new kimono she had made - a summery light blue with a simple pattern of white flowers. He wanted to reach out and trace his fingers down the side of her face again. He wanted to lean in as close as she would let him and breathe in the intoxicating scent of her.

Instead he said, “We could go wading. It’s going to be very hot, so…”

“So we should bring a jug of tea along with us,” she finished, her eyes shining. “And perhaps a bit of the mizu yokan.” 

Without skipping a beat, Kenshin went to the tansu chest and dug out a few multipurpose, plain cotton towels. While he tied a carrying rope around the neck of the tea jug, Tomoe wrapped some of the leftover mizu yokan in a towel.

They were out the door a moment later. He shouted something about taking a walk to Hiko, who was heating pine tar to repair one of their rain barrels, and soon they were heading out of the clearing on the well-beaten path that led into the forest and toward the river.

The forest, overgrown with moss and heavy with foliage, was several degrees cooler, though that hadn’t quieted the cicadas at all.

They walked in silence for a bit, zori padding softly against the leaf litter. Kenshin breathed in the mossy scent of fresh greenery. Birdsong filtered through the trees, along with the ever present buzz of the cicadas and the crickets. 

He felt his shoulder muscles unclench a bit.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed the trees,” he said quietly, “until I came back to them.”

“This forest is old,” Tomoe said, her voice barely above a whisper. Something about her tone was solemn, as though they were walking through a temple or a shrine rather than a forest. “I wonder how many generations of people it’s seen come and go?”

A philosopher had probably asked the same question and written several haiku about it. Idly he wondered if Tomoe ever wrote haiku during her nightly journaling. 

They walked in silence for a few steps before Tomoe added, “I never saw forests like this until I left Edo.” She looked up at the leafy ceiling. “And I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so beautiful.”

Kenshin glanced at her. “I never really appreciated it as a boy.” He shrugged. “Or maybe I never had time to.”

Or maybe the forest looked very different when viewed as a training ground. No time to appreciate its natural beauty when he was being kicked into mud puddles.

He shoved that thought aside.

“But you have the time now.” Tomoe hesitantly reached out for his hand. “And you’re no longer a boy.”

His breath caught. Something about the way she had phrased that, though he didn’t want to examine it too closely… 

Their fingers entwined easily. 

They continued to walk together until they reached the section of river that he knew to be calm, but not as shallow as where they drew water or did laundry. 

He set the tea jug down and stepped out of his zori. The earth was soft and welcoming beneath his feet.

Tomoe looked at him for a moment, then followed suit, slipping off her own zori.

“The water’s either going to be cold…” Kenshin eased his sword out of his belt, wondering for a fleeting moment if bringing it to the river was needlessly paranoid.

No.

Better to be prepared.

“... or really cold.” 

He set the sword down by the tea jug, decided that Tomoe probably wasn’t ready for completely naked swimming - something stirred in him, hot and flustered at the thought - and while he untied his hakama, carefully folded it and set it aside, he kept his long, worn training gi on.

Tomoe, meanwhile, had set down the towel-wrapped bundle of mizu yokan on a flat-topped rock beside the water’s edge and was in the process of dipping her toe into the water. She gave a soft yelp of surprise and pulled her foot back, then glanced over at him before gingerly easing it back in.

“Really cold.” Her hand bunched the hem of her kimono, keeping it out of the water as she put her other foot in. “Does it come from the top of the mountain?”

“Probably,” he said, distracted and on the verge of suggesting she simply remove her kimono and set it aside. 

Something definitely stirred at that, and he felt his face flame probably the same color as his hair. 

“Hadajuban,” he managed. 

She looked at him with a strange expression on her face, and he realized that he probably wasn’t making a great deal of sense, bringing up her undershirt and slip with no explanation. And that he was blushing crimson.

“I mean…” He swallowed. “You could… take off your kimono. So it doesn’t get wet. Because hadajuban are easier.” He rubbed at his forehead. “To wash.”

He was terrible at this.

Now it was Tomoe’s turn to blush as she nodded and silently began to untie and remove her obi and its various accessories. She carefully folded them and set them on top of his hakama, then slid her kimono off, followed by her nagajuban. It pooled at her elbows for a moment before she removed it completely, then methodically folded both pieces into two neat squares.

The fabric of the hadajuban was so thin, so… gauzy. He could clearly see the soft swell of her breasts, the gentle curve of her hips, and he had to force himself to look away.

He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath.

She was holding out the folded clothing expectantly, and when he was certain he had mastered himself, he took it from her and set it with his hakama. 

“All right,” he managed. “Good.”

Keeping his eyes fixed very steadfastly on her face, he offered her his hand and together they stepped into the bracing water.

He could feel the shiver that ran through her entire body as both of her feet found purchase on the rounded stones of the bottom of the river. They were worn smooth as glass from countless centuries of polishing by the rushing water, and they were covered with a thin and slippery film of algae.

She gripped his hand more tightly, as a long and satisfied sigh escaped her mouth.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

Sunlight glittered across the surface of the river. The cicadas and the birds continued to sing with urgency, the sun beat down on their heads, and they waded out hand-in-hand until the water lapped around their waists.

He gave into the urge and slipped fully under the water, letting its cool embrace wash away the last of the tension in his muscles.

Kyoto felt very far away. Even the hut felt very far away in that moment. 

When he broke the surface, he wiped the hair out of his eyes and smiled at Tomoe. “See? Refreshing.”

She looked at him for a moment that seemed to draw out for a long time, a faraway look in her eyes and a half-formed question working at her lips. And then her eyes came into focus, she squeezed his hand once more, and she too sank beneath the surface of the water.

A second later, she rose back to her feet, sparkling river water sluicing off of hair that now looked as though it had been sculpted out of black lacquer. Water dripped from her face, coursed down her cheeks and lips and chin -

And her thin, gauzy hadajuban was soaked completely through, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

He sucked in his breath. Reached out and smoothed a tendril of hair from her face. His fingers trembled. He kept his eyes on her eyes and didn’t look at the way the hadajuban had gone nearly translucent.

Didn’t look at the way it clung to her breasts and her waist.

Didn’t look.

Tomoe took a shuddering breath that was mostly a gasp, and of course it was because of how cold the water was and not because of… anything else, but he couldn’t stop the feeling that coiled deep in his belly at that sound.

But the look on her face as she opened her eyes and took in his own soaked clothing was absolutely riveting.

Her eyes widened, her lips parted, a spot of color appeared on each cheek, and - maybe it was his imagination? - she seemed to be having just as much trouble keeping her eyes from wandering over his body as he had had keeping his eyes from wandering over hers.

She turned her body to face him, even took a step closer to him, her eyes searching his for… what?

“Kenshin…”

The way she said his name - just barely a whisper on her lips - made his breath catch. He trailed his fingers down her face, skimmed over her neck and her collarbone, down and further down until his fingers lingered on the swell of her breast and… 

And he changed course, sliding his hand around to her back and then to her waist. Gently he nudged her closer, her breasts just brushing against his chest.

“Tomoe…” he managed. Barely.

Her hands grazed the backs of his shoulders as she looked into his eyes. There was hesitation in her gaze, but it battled with something that might have been hunger.

She took a sudden, daring step forward and gasped again as her body pressed against his. He sank to his knees, the water coming up to their necks, and somehow that made it easier to wrap his arms around her, to pull her even more tightly against him.

Their lips came together suddenly, pressing against each other urgently, and he couldn’t say who had initiated it, but he didn’t care, he didn’t care-

“Wait.”

Tomoe suddenly broke away from the feverish kiss, her breath coming in pants and her eyes unfocused. Her hand drifted down to his and tugged at it as she began leading him out of the river and onto the grassy bank.

He was on the verge of asking if she wanted to stop, if she wanted... what, he wasn’t sure… but then she gave him a breathless sort of half-smile and tugged at his hand again. She was pulling him along with her to the bank of the river, and then her arms were around him again and she was sinking to the ground along with him, and…

And… 

The sun was at his back and the water rushed behind them. The cicadas buzzed their endless summer frustration, the birds trilled in the trees, and there was nothing but the two of them on the mossy soft ground.

\---

He realized it was late-afternoon once the sun no longer hung quite so high up in the cloudless sky. 

The mizu yokan was long gone, the jug of tea empty, and Kenshin and Tomoe sat on the riverbank, damp clothing hanging open on both of them. His hair fell loose around his shoulders and down his back, cord lost somewhere in the greenery.

“We’ll get the grass stains out, I’m sure.” The words came slowly. He felt sleepy and satiated. 

“I think we’ll have to.” Tomoe stretched languidly and lay back on the warm grass without bothering to tug her hadajuban closed around her. “It would feel crude to display them.”

His gaze lingered on every bit of deliciously exposed skin before he joined her in the grass. He tried to think of something profound - or even witty - to say, but what came out was a hum of acknowledgement instead. 

She rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her hand to look at him, and reached over to wind the fingers of her free hand absently into his hair.

“It’s such an unusual color,” she murmured, as though she were talking to herself. She had been the one to tug the cord out of his hair, the one to wrap her arms and legs around him and urge him to keep going, not to stop, not to-

His mind had gone blank with desire. It had been easy - so easy - to lose track of the hours. To lose himself in her. 

A tendril of his hair - auburn against pale skin - was coiled around her finger. He brought himself back to the conversation.

“It’s always been that way,” he replied. “Never looked any different.”

“You’re the only one I’ve ever seen who had hair this color.” She continued to wind the single lock of hair around her finger, twisting and untwisting it as though she were hypnotized by it, until she looked up at him, hint of a smile playing at the corners of her eyes. “So much about you is unique.”

“Not really.” A lazy smile drifted across his lips. “Aside from my hair, not really. My parents were farmers, after all. That’s pretty common.”

He could stay like that for hours. Just the two of them, half-dressed on the riverbank.

“You’re wrong,” she said softly, still toying with his hair. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you in my life.”

He rested his hand against the soft curve of her hip, though he resisted the urge to trail his fingers down the welcoming expanse of her leg. Just barely.

“I hope that’s a good thing.” 

Well, he might have given into the urge. Just a little.

Tomoe gave a soft hum in response before heaving a deep sigh and sitting up again.

“We should be heading back soon,” she said in a tone that betrayed a clear lack of desire to do so. “Before Hiko-san starts wondering where we are and comes looking for us.”

He made a sound of disappointment that he felt deep in his soul. 

“Please don’t bring him up when we’re like this.” He sat up, albeit extremely reluctantly. “This was such a good day.”

As they took the time to clean up, he was very glad that they had carefully folded and set aside most of their clothing. And while he had gone into the water in his training gi, it had dried out pretty thoroughly in the sun. 

They walked back to the hut with their hands entwined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> As always, my beta reader, an_earl, is peachy keen. I've been informed that the characters on Hiko's sake jug mean "longevity." Because it's always wine o'clock somewhere. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I've been receiving some lovely comments, so please keep it up. Comments, questions, and feedback are both inspiring and encouraging, so don't be shy. You can also say hi to me on tumblr @frostyemma.


	6. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My husband brought me there after I had passed out in the street.” She stared into her teacup. “And I had nowhere else to go.”
> 
> “Didn’t you?” They were coming to the meat of the discussion at last. “Where is your father, then?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Mizu manju : gelatinous rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste  
> Mimawarigumi : a less prestigious version of the Shinsengumi, more or less  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Onmitsu/Shinobi : Ninja spies and assassins  
> Hakubaikou : white plum perfume

**Founding year of Genji  
(late August 1864)**

A week later, it was becoming clear that Kenshin had not done as Hiko had suggested and spoken to his wife.

Oh, the two of them had certainly found enough time to spend together, but Hiko strongly suspected that it had less to do with serious discussions about Tomoe’s past and more to do with finally realizing that they were newlyweds and ought to do something about it.

The fact that it had taken so long for Kenshin to reach that stage in his own marriage did not escape Hiko either.

Still, the questions Hiko had raised about Tomoe’s background and motives needed to be answered one way or another, and if Kenshin had been avoiding asking them - or had simply forgotten to ask them in the heady rush of hormonal imperatives - then it fell to Hiko to find out. And so, that afternoon while Tomoe was sewing and Kenshin was puttering around in the garden once more - honestly, how much time did it take to care for a vegetable garden of only a few square bu? - Hiko went out to corner him.

“Your wife wants fish for dinner,” he said without preamble. 

The boy absolutely took his time getting to his feet and brushing the dirt from his clothing before looking at him. “All right.”

“It’s your turn to catch them.” Hiko tossed his hair out of his eyes. “Try to find a few large ones.”

“I have done this before.” Kenshin moved out of the garden with what seemed like deliberate sluggishness, picked up his sword, and carefully eased it into his belt. “You know.”

“I do know.” Hiko’s brows lowered in annoyance. “Which is why I’m reminding you.”

“Yes, Shishou, thank you.” Kenshin went to retrieve the fishing basket, but the petulance in his tone was impossible to miss. “Don’t know what I would do without the constant reminders.”

“There’s a reason you’re still my apprentice.” Hiko glowered. “Speaking of which, you never used to spend quite so much time tending to the vegetables. I might almost think you were trying to avoid me.”

Kenshin returned with the basket over his shoulder and the casual insouciance of youth. “No idea what would make you think so.” He waited a beat. “Shishou.” 

It occurred to Hiko that perhaps he had not hit Kenshin over the head nearly as often as he should have during their training.

“Go and get the fish.” Hiko waved Kenshin towards the river. “As many as you can. We can salt what she doesn’t cook. We’ll need them for the winter.”

“Never settled in for winter before.” Kenshin waved over his shoulder without bothering to look back as he trudged away. “Wonder what that’s like.”

Hiko just barely resisted the urge to hurl something at the back of his idiot apprentice’s head, settling instead for heading into the house to confront his enigma of a wife.

Tomoe sat by the window overlooking the forest, stitching steadily away at what appeared to be a kimono. She did not look up when Hiko came in.

“Your husband is settling right back into his old ways,” he said by way of greeting. “Sullen and antagonistic as ever.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Tomoe said diplomatically. She set the kimono aside and looked up. “Would you care for a cup of cooled tea?”

“Thank you.” He’d noticed she had a knack for changing the subject at inopportune times. “And you seem to be settling in nicely as well.” 

“I’m honored you think so.” She stepped into her zori and spent a moment in the kitchen, pouring two cups of cooled barley tea from a jar. “I was thinking of making some mizu manju once we get some more red beans.”

“Perhaps you could persuade your husband to try to grow some.” He accepted the tea offered to him and reminded himself not to be lured too far into small talk. “I imagine this is something of a change from the life of an Edo samurai’s daughter?”

He’d suspected as much, but her reaction would tell him for certain.

Her expression betrayed nothing. She sipped her tea. “I imagine food preparation is much the same all over the country.”

Slippery, that. Still, a lack of argument was as good as a confirmation.

“I imagine so.” He took a long drink of tea, found it cool and refreshing. “Still, life on a mountaintop and life in a city are very different things.”

She hummed in response and took another small sip of tea. “I’m enjoying my life here far more than I did at the Kohagiya in Kyoto.”

“I’m hardly surprised.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “It can’t have been very relaxing, living amongst a group of political revolutionaries and active assassins.” He paused, looking at her over the rim of his teacup. “Why did you stay there, anyway?”

“My husband brought me there after I had passed out in the street.” She stared into her teacup. “And I had nowhere else to go.”

“Didn’t you?” They were coming to the meat of the discussion at last. “Where is your father, then?”

She didn’t look up from her teacup. After a moment, she said, “What makes you think that would have been an option for me?”

He looked at her shrewdly. Her expression gave nothing away, as he had expected, but there were other means of reading a person. Her question, for example.

“The only two reasons for it not to have been an option make no sense,” he replied bluntly. “He’s not dead, because you don’t speak of him the way you would a dead man. And he didn’t mistreat you, because you don’t speak of him that way either.”

Her eyes stayed firmly fixed to her lap. 

“And so I find myself wondering,” he continued, keeping a close watch on her face, “why you wouldn’t simply return to your home. Or, more importantly, why you left it in the first place.”

She sat statue-still, betrayed only by the slight rise and fall of her chest with every carefully controlled breath.

“Does your father even know you’re here?” Hiko pressed further, beginning to feel slightly irritated by her refusal to even respond. “Or anywhere near here?”

“No.” The word was no more than a whisper, and still she refused to meet his gaze.

His brows lifted fractionally. “And were you planning to let him know?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Hiko stared heavily at her for a moment, then shook his head and sighed. “Would you prefer him to imagine you dead somewhere?”

It occurred to him that perhaps he was being harsher than the girl was used to, but it simultaneously occurred to him that perhaps she needed to be brought somewhat harshly back to her senses.

“I like it here,” she said quietly. 

“I’m pleased that you do.” He let the harshness bleed out of his own voice. “But surely you don’t want to put your father through the grief of imagining his daughter lost forever, no matter how pleasant you may find it to live on Mount Atago.”

Finally she lifted her eyes, fixing him with a cool gaze. “You know nothing of my father.” 

“Only slightly less than I know about you,” he countered, the earlier bluntness returning instantly at the look in her eyes. “For example, I might be interested to know why you ran away from home to come to a city at the heart of a war, fell into living with a group of rebel soldiers, and married one of them when you’re very clearly not with child.”

Her cheeks flushed hot at that. She looked away.

“And I highly doubt that your husband has the answers to these questions either.” He finished his tea and set the cup down with an audible clack. “Or has even bothered to ask them.”

“He is…” Her breath caught. “Very respectful.”

Hiko snorted at that.

“I’d call him naive.” He continued to gaze shrewdly at her. “And unwilling to delve too deeply into matters that might disturb his worldview. I was unsuccessful at protecting him from himself a year ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying now.”

Her fingers trembled ever so slightly against her teacup. She set it aside and arranged her hands carefully in her lap. 

“So.” Hiko leaned forward. “If I ask troubling questions, it’s for the sake of the man you married.”

He let her sit in silence for a moment before speaking again.

“Now. Why did you leave your father’s house to begin with?”

“I…” She stared at her hands. “It was not… very happy. I couldn’t stay.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed a bit at that, and he wondered for a moment whether he had been wrong before in deducing that her father had not mistreated her. But he supposed that someone else might have, or that there could be an entirely different reason for her expressed unhappiness.

“Why?” he asked simply.

She shook her head, fingers digging into the fabric of her kimono. “We are a country on the verge of war,” she finally whispered. “It was not… none of us were… very happy.”

“Because you come from a family of Edo samurai, you mean?” 

He did not split hairs over the fact that they were a country _at_ war, not on _the verge of_ war; though the distinction was important, there were likely to be better times to follow that tangent.

“I could…” Her hands trembled, and she dug more deeply into her kimono. “I could never return. Not now.”

“Now that you’ve married the foremost of the Ishin Shishi’s hitokiri?” He realized that he hadn’t considered this earlier. “Which only makes the question about why you chose to do so more important.”

“Because he asked me.” She said the words so quietly, he nearly had to lean in to hear her. “And because I wanted to.”

“Was it worth the loss of your home and your family?” Hiko did not believe for an instant that this was the full extent of her reasoning, and he was determined to pick apart the shreds of her answers until he received satisfactory ones. “I find it difficult to believe that you wouldn’t have thought that far before you made your choice.”

Her lower lip trembled. “Why?”

“Because you’re an intelligent girl,” he replied, looking her dead in the eyes. “You had a reason for doing what you did, and whatever the reason was, you clearly weighed it against what you would inevitably lose and decided it was worth more. And I want to know what it is, since it involves the life of my apprentice.”

“I’m not-” She choked on her words. Her eyes seemed to shimmer for a moment before spilling over, wet trails streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not trying to hurt him. I’m not trying to hurt anyone.”

“And yet you knew you would.” 

Her tears may have been genuine - they certainly appeared to be - but Hiko knew that they might also have been a desperate shield against further scrutiny. And the truth was what he was after. 

“You knew that you would doom your father to a life without you, and you believed that whatever you were attempting to accomplish was worth the pain you would cause him. So I will ask you one more time: what was it?”

Her shoulders shook, along with her hands, and the tears continued to stream down her face. She dropped her gaze back into her lap.

“I was…” She twisted her hands together, tightly enough to blanch her knuckles. “I was going to be married. Before. In Edo. But… but…” Her teeth were practically chattering now, with fear or sorrow or perhaps some mixture of both. “He died.”

A terrible premonition seized Hiko suddenly. He thought he already knew the answer, but he had to ask all the same.

“How?”

“He died,” she echoed. She looked as if she would be sick. “And it was… it was my fault.”

“How was it your fault?” Hiko felt an odd, cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was likely to end very badly. 

She wrapped trembling arms around herself, gripping the edges of her sleeves and leaning forward, eyes fixed on the floor. 

“Because I…” Her tears dripped onto the floor, drop by awful drop. “I am…” She whispered the words as if they were a curse. “I am the kind of woman who can’t show love. No matter how happy I am.”

That threw him slightly off balance. 

“That isn’t my impression of you,” he said, adding dryly, “and I’m certain it isn’t Kenshin’s either, especially for the last several days.”

She shook her head. “My fiance thought…” Again, her breath caught. “He thought I was not happy with the engagement, but I was. I was…” She gasped the words out. “So happy.”

It was Hiko’s turn to remain silent and let her grief do the work of bringing the rest of the story out of her.

“He…” Another gasping breath. “He postponed the wedding and… and took a position with the  
Mimawarigumi in Kyoto.” Her shoulders shook violently. She gripped her sleeves even tighter. “He had no… no business doing so. He was a mediocre swordsman at best, and he…”

Hiko knew that his awful premonition was only moments away from being confirmed. He knew that it would be easy to stop her, to let her switch the topic of conversation to something else, and then never to bring it up again. 

She would likely be grateful to him for doing so.

Letting her continue would be like cutting open a wound that had begun to fester. The pain would be terrible, and the stench of corruption would be unbearable for the moment, but the wound could thereafter be healed. If he stopped her now, the putridness would simply poison her over time.

He said nothing.

“He died. In the street. At night.” Another choking gasp. “He wasn’t… he wasn’t even the target. He was just… he was just…”

“Just collateral damage,” Hiko finished for her. He felt bitter and knew exactly why. “I spent a great deal of time wondering just how many collateral deaths my idiot apprentice was responsible for.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, just muffling the keening sob that tore out of her throat. 

So it was true, then.

“And when you discovered that Kenshin was the one responsible, you left home to try to exact revenge.” Pieces were beginning to fall into place in this ghastly puzzle, and Hiko felt that cold feeling seize his gut again. “So you found him in Kyoto. But why didn’t you simply kill him and be done with it?”

She looked up at him then, eyes red and face blotched with her tears. “You’ve said so yourself that no man but you could best him. How do you imagine I would do that then?”

“You lived with him for months.” Hiko narrowed his eyes. “It would have been simple enough to poison his food, or even to cut his throat in his sleep.”

She crumpled at that, nearly sinking down to the floor. “I don’t want that. I don’t want…” She clutched at her heart, fingers grasping at the front of her kimono. “I don’t want anyone to hurt him.”

He looked at her pityingly. “Yes, I’ve guessed as much lately. But that wasn’t always the way you felt. And you and I both know it isn’t the way most feel.”

Another premonition seized him, and he spoke almost without thinking. 

“So who did you talk to before you came to Kyoto? Who did you find that could have helped you kill him?”

“It was a mistake,” she whispered. “I should… I should have never…” She gasped for breath. “I should have never… I wasn’t thinking… and once I met him, I knew… I knew I couldn’t…” 

“I know what you feel now,” he replied. “And I know how easy it is to make terrible choices in the midst of grief. But I need to know who you threw your lot in with.” 

She looked up at him then and took a shaking breath. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to know who might come traipsing up my mountain looking to kill him.” He gave her a very even look. “Or you, for that matter. I value my privacy here, and I would find it extremely tedious to have to deal with a constant stream of angry counterrevolutionaries looking to make an example of my idiot apprentice or his wife.”

“I don’t…” She straightened herself out, pushing herself into correct sitting posture and taking a deep breath. “I don’t understand.”

He snorted. “Don’t tell me you thought I was going to throw you out.” 

The look on her face told him she had thought exactly that.

“You’re the only person my idiot apprentice listens to with any sort of regularity. I’d be a fool to throw away my best chance of curing him of the results of his stupidity.” He considered a moment. “And besides, as I’ve already remarked to him, we’ve never eaten so well.”

Her gaze dropped to her lap. She took several steadying breaths before speaking. “And once I tell you… then what?”

Hiko cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not going to go out looking for them. You can rest easy about that.”

He had no interest at all in taking a page out of his idiot apprentice’s book and becoming an assassin, paid or otherwise. He would kill a man who stood toe-to-toe with him and threatened his life or the lives of any innocents around him, but killing in cold blood was distasteful. It flew in the face of everything Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu stood for, and it was, frankly, beneath him.

Without lifting her gaze, she said, “I married my fiance’s killer. Should I also turn on the people I sought out to help me avenge my fiance’s death?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I am… unforgivable.”

Hiko snorted. “Forgiveness is a strange thing. I wouldn’t presume to say what is forgivable and what is not, especially seeing as how you seem to have forgiven my idiot apprentice for what he did.”

Her head snapped up at that and she looked at him with wide eyes.

“I told you,” he said, his voice softening slightly, “I don’t intend to hunt them down, whoever they are. I learned a long time ago that one man is incapable of changing the entire world with his sword. At best, he can safeguard the lives he sees in front of him and keep order in the world within the reach of his arm.” 

Her gaze once again fell into her lap. 

“And all you are doing in telling me who these men are,” he continued, “is allowing me to prepare for whoever may come up this mountain looking for you or for Kenshin.”

After a long moment, she said, “The Yaminobu call themselves the hidden hands of the Bakufu. They are the shogun’s personal onmitsu, and they have a particular interest in…” Her voice dropped away. “My husband.”

“Ah.”

Well, that news was less awful than it could have been, and yet not quite good enough. 

A band of spies and assassins beholden to the Tokugawa Bakufu were certainly not the sort of people he wanted paying him a visit, but there were bound to be only a few of them. And any master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu who couldn’t defeat a handful of shinobi on his own home ground was unworthy of the name Hiko Seijuro.

“Do they know where you are?”

“Nobody knows,” she said quietly. 

Something tickled at the back of Hiko’s mind then, and he let it come to him.

Kenshin had said they had originally been heading for Otsu, but neither of them had wanted to go. He had said there was a traitor in the ranks of the Ishin Shishi, but that no one knew who it was.

“Did they know you were supposed to be in Otsu?” He leaned forward. “Would they have gone to look for him there?”

“I don’t know.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “I haven’t communicated with them since I left Edo.”

Hiko’s brow furrowed at that. 

If what she said was true, then her vow of revenge had been only the misguided ravings of a broken heart. If she had been seriously invested in Kenshin’s death, then she would have remained in close contact with the Yaminobu throughout her time in Kyoto. She’d certainly had more than enough to report to them, after all. 

And so had the still-nameless traitor…

But Tomoe would not know who the traitor was, and so she would not know who else the man had been in contact with. So it was entirely possible that these Yaminobu would have gone to Otsu fully expecting to find them there. And when the trail went cold there, they would have no reason to search Mount Atago.

“It sounds as though you and my idiot apprentice have a great deal to talk about, then.”

He stood suddenly, slipped his feet into his zori without saying a word, and headed into the kitchen. A moment later, he returned with a sake saucer and the jug.

“Drink this,” he said gruffly, pouring her a generous measure and sliding it across to her. “And wash your face. Then go and speak to him.”

She took the cup with trembling hands and quaffed the contents in one swallow, and Hiko suddenly saw in her frightened face just how young she was. 

She and his idiot apprentice both.

He held out his hand for the saucer, refilling it and handing it back to her as he thought over how young Kenshin had been when he had found him. How young he had been to lose his family, to watch the wholesale slaughter of the entire caravan that had borne him away from his village, to be sold into slavery and stolen by bandits and raised to a life of swordsmanship. How young he had been when he had abandoned his apprenticeship and marched off with his stubborn head high and his youthful eyes full of idealistic stars.

How young he had been to see those illusions crumble.

And Hiko knew that he could not blame Kenshin alone for what had happened once he had left the mountain. Kenshin’s foolishness was immense, certainly, but it was the foolishness of a boy. Hiko could easily have prevented him from leaving - should have done so, as a grown man who knew all too well what his idiot apprentice was walking into - and yet he had not. He had simply sat back and let the boy make the mistake that would change everything.

He supposed that Tomoe’s fiance’s blood was on his hands as well.

“Talk to him,” he repeated, and his eyes grew flinty. “And if he won’t listen to reason, then I’ll talk to him myself.”

...  
...

Kenshin had set up the fishing net in the usual place between two decently-sized rocks in a fast moving part of the river. He alternated between emptying the net’s catches into a basket and occasionally snatching a particularly promising looking fish up out of the water by hand.

The former was easier and meant he could bask in the sun. The latter was good practice, and as he hadn’t drawn his sword in nearly two months (not counting the one nightmare, and best not to think about that), practice was needed.

Eventually, he would be drawn back into the war. 

One way or another, whether he went looking for it or because it had engulfed the entire country and become impossible to avoid. The time would come, and he couldn’t - _wouldn’t_ \- remain on Mount Atago forever.

Even if the past week had been… decidedly pleasant. 

Just thinking about his wife - his name on her lips, the way she wrapped herself around him and drew him into her - made his face burn, and not unpleasantly. 

Made other parts of him stir, definitely not unpleasantly.

As if his very thoughts could wish her into being, soft footsteps a little ways down alerted him to her presence. He drew himself up from where he was sprawled across the rocks to keep an eye on the net and shifted around to watch her approach.

She was wearing the zori he had made for her. Such a small thing, and yet he felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

“Come to check on my progress?” He gestured to the basket, half-full of char and trout. “We’ll have plenty for dinner and for salting.”

She gave him a brittle sort of look in return, and he felt his formerly good mood falter.

“I…” She swallowed hard. Her voice was just barely above a whisper. “I’ve actually come to talk to you. About something very important.”

His stomach seemed to plummet into his feet at that.

“All right,” he managed. “Let me just,” he waved in the general direction of the net, “bring that in.”

Carefully, he freed the net from the rocks and shook the handful of trout that had accumulated back into the river. He folded the net slowly and methodically and placed it on top of the basket. 

Tomoe watched him wordlessly.

“All right,” he said again, and ran his hands down the sides of his hakama.

She swallowed hard again, and was twisting her hands together so fervently that they had gone red. And the scent of hakubaikou that always seemed to surround her was lightly tinged with - was it sake?

“Maybe you should sit down.” She clutched both hands together tightly. “Maybe we both should.”

“All right,” he said for the third time. 

His throat had gone very dry. He collected the basket and his sword, found a dry patch of grass away from the river, and sat. Tomoe did the same.

He looked at her. Waited for whatever horrible thing she was likely to tell him.

“You remember,” she said at last, her eyes fixed firmly on her own knees, “how I said that I used to live in Edo?”

Over the next… hour? hours? Kenshin immediately lost track of any sense of time… Tomoe, voice shaking and hands trembling, told him that she had once been engaged to a man named Kiyosato Akira.

(The name meant nothing to him, and yet…)

Kiyosato had taken a position with the Mimawarigumi in Kyoto.

(He had only a few run-ins with the Mimawarigumi. They weren’t nearly as formidable as the Shinsengumi, but even so…)

Kiyosato had been assigned to guard a high-ranking official by the name of Shigekura Jubei. 

(He knew then. He knew how the story ended…)

Kiyosato died in the streets of Kyoto at night. His body had been found next to a gutter.

(Kiyosato hadn’t been the target. He had been a mediocre swordsman - anyone could see that, yes? - but he had a very strong will to live…)

Tenchu. Heaven’s justice. So said the letter of condemnation left on Shigekura Jubei’s body. 

(He felt the slice of cold steel against his cheek, the rush of warm blood down his stunned face.)

Tears streaming down her cheeks, hands violently shaking in her lap, Tomoe told Kenshin that she had planned to kill him. That she had joined with the Yaminobu to do so. That she had come to Kyoto for just that purpose.

Their meeting in the street that night couldn’t have been an accident. 

(Then why had she married him?)

“...and I knew I couldn’t go through with it, I knew as soon as I got to know who you really were…”

(Why?)

“...and I never contacted them once I’d gotten to Kyoto, and I never thought of how it would end, and… and…”

( _Why?_ )

She dissolved into shuddering tears, her arms wrapped around herself, but she did not wail or sob. She simply curled in on herself and wept.

And if Kenshin had been a better man, he would have taken his wife in his arms and said the correct words that would have made things right again. He would have known exactly what to do or say. 

But he wasn’t a better man.

He never had been. 

He was a killer who had destroyed his own wife’s happiness. 

He was a killer who had murdered the man Tomoe had really loved and then stepped into his place, playing at a child’s fantasy of marriage.

The bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed it down, forced it down, clenched his hakama with his killer’s hands and forced himself to be still.

“I know what you must think of me,” Tomoe said in a quavering voice. “I know I’m a terrible woman, and a terrible wife, and -” Her voice broke, and she buried her face in her hands again for a time and cried silently.

“No.” His voice sounded thin and hollow to his own ears. “That’s not what I think.” 

His blood-stained hands stayed fisted in his hakama. 

“I don’t know how to show love.” Her words were muffled by her hands, and Kenshin wanted to reach out, but he remained frozen in place. “I never did. What- what kind of-” She gasped, choking on the words. “What kind of woman falls in love with the man who killed her fiance?”

He would be sick.

His wife continued to sob into her hands, and he continued to stare at her like the back alley killer he knew himself to be.

Finally, he forced himself unsteadily to his feet. He slid his sword into his belt - the very sword he had murdered Tomoe’s fiance with - and picked up the basket of fish. He kept his other hand carefully at his side.

“Let me walk you back to the house,” he said quietly.

“What?” She looked up, confusion plain on her tear-streaked and blotchy face. “Why?”

“Because we can’t stay on the riverbank.” He turned and forced himself to walk into the woods, and at least he was steady on his feet. He could make it back to the hut, see to it that she got there safely. It was the least he could do.

He hated himself in that moment. 

She followed him.

They got as far as the edge of the clearing. He couldn’t make himself go another step. He dropped the basket of fish and said something to Tomoe - he couldn’t remember what - and then he turned and fled back into the woods.

Like a coward.

...

The Jizo Bosatsu statues kept silent company.

At least twenty of them crowded into an embankment, the serene Bodhisattva protectors of deceased children, crumbling and moss covered, some adorned with red bibs to represent the souls of innocent children gone before their parents. Their faces were soft and calm.

Forgiving.

Kenshin didn’t want forgiveness. Certainly he hadn’t lulled himself into thinking he deserved it or could ever earn it. He had spilled enough blood to drown himself in, and even if it led to a world free of needless suffering, there would be a price to pay for every life taken.

He was paying it now.

Tomoe, crumpled and crying in the grass. Her fiance, dead in a gutter, and Kenshin hadn’t even known the man’s name until today. 

His marred cheek seemed to ache. He put a hand to it and closed his eyes, and could feel steel cutting into flesh, could feel the shock of blood running rivulets down his face. 

Playing at married life seemed like a cruel joke. 

Marriage wasn’t meant for men like him. That was why Katsura-san had told him to pretend at being married. To wait out his time in Otsu until he could return to doing the one thing he was truly skilled at.

And yet…

She wrapped herself around him willingly, legs around his waist and fingers in his hair, urging him not to stop, urging him on and on, until he spilled himself inside of her and collapsed against her panting and spent.

Why?

He had asked her to marry him. A real marriage, not pretend, and she had agreed. Without hesitation, she had agreed, and she hadn’t even known his real name yet.

Why?

She could have killed him - easily - so many times over. He would have let her. He wouldn’t have lifted a hand to stop her.

_What kind of woman falls in love with the man who killed her fiance?_

She had said that. 

Not him. 

...

Time slipped away.

He wandered the mountain in a fog, treading the same well-worn paths he had followed as a boy. He sat by the river and watched the sunlight sparkle across the surface. Eventually the sun started to slip behind the trees.

As he approached their homestead, he caught the scent of drying fish on the early-evening breeze. They would have been carefully prepared and strung across bamboo racks. At least the day’s catch hadn’t gone to waste.

Hiko sat on the log-splitting stump in front of the house, his ever-present sake jug by his side. Several of the fish Kenshin had caught earlier lay on a tray before him, skewered on thin bamboo spits and prepared for grilling.

“You’ve been gone some time,” Hiko said, picking up the jug and pouring himself a cup. His face was inscrutable, but there was a different sort of note in his voice than the usual derision. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to come and find you.”

“Sorry I didn’t catch enough.” The words came easily, but he could hear the exhaustion in his tone. “I was distracted. Tomorrow…”

“Oh, stop it.” Hiko took a long sip of the sake and gave Kenshin a tired sort of look over the rim of the cup. “Stop apologizing for things that have nothing to do with why you’re actually miserable.”

Kenshin sighed. The sound seemed to rattle through his bones. 

Hiko tossed off the rest of the sake and set the cup down on the stump beside him. “Your wife is inside the house, curled up in a miserable ball.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. “She wasn’t sure when you’d be back, or even if you’d be back, no matter what I told her.”

“I wasn’t sure she’d want…” He trailed away, putting a hand to his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about anything anymore.”

Hiko sighed heavily. Kenshin heard him pour another cupful of sake.

“If you did, you’d be the wisest man in the world.” Hiko’s voice sounded almost as tired as Kenshin felt. “But having heard her story, and having seen what a state she’s been in all day, I can tell you that what she wants right now is for you to go in there and let her know you’re back.”

Hiko’s voice paused as, presumably, he took another drink of sake. “And after that?” He gave a snort that might have been a chuckle of mirthless laughter. “I imagine she’ll let you know what to think.”

Kenshin dropped his hand and looked at his shishou for a long moment. He nodded and walked toward the hut wordlessly.

The inside of the hut was cool and dark. The setting sun glowed between the propped-open shutters, striping the floor in rays of burnt orange. His wife was slumped by the stack of folded futon, journal open in her lap.

“I’m back,” he said quietly, sliding the door shut behind him. “Sorry I worried you.”

The apology sounded absurd to his ears, but he couldn’t take it back. 

Tomoe looked up with swollen, red eyes. At first, it seemed as though she didn’t see him; her eyes were unfocused as though she were looking right through him. But a moment later, her eyes widened in surprise.

“Kenshin?” 

She got to her feet, the journal sliding to the floor, and staggered over to him, collapsing against him and clutching handfuls of his kimono.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she whispered raggedly into his chest.

Maybe he should have kept his hands to himself, but he couldn’t help it. He slid his arms around her and pulled her tightly against him, breathing in the comforting scent of hakubaikou.

The comforting scent of _her._

“Where would I go?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head, her face burrowing into his chest, and clutched at him desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

He pulled back at that, and she must have seen the absolute bewilderment on his face. “You’re sorry? Why?”

“Because when I heard that he was dead, it was like something died in me as well.” She shivered. “Or maybe it was always dead, and I just hadn’t realized it until then, but I knew he wouldn’t have gone to Kyoto if it hadn’t been for me, and I know I should never have gone to them, I was just so heartbroken and angry and…”

“It’s fine.” He said the words almost desperately. “Tomoe?” He put a hand to her cheek, and she looked at him with reddened eyes. “I understand.”

He thought of Akane-san, Kasumi-san, and Sakura-san, of hefting an enormous sword in his child’s hands. He hadn’t been able to protect them or save them, and if his shishou hadn’t taken vengeance for him…

“I understand,” he repeated, and before he could think better of it, placed a kiss on her forehead. “I do.”

“You…” She hesitated, looked up at him uncertainly, and placed a trembling hand on his scarred cheek. “You do? But how? Why?”

He placed his hand over hers and leaned into her soft palm. “I just… do.”

There would be others one day. If he survived the war, there would be others who came after him, looking to make him pay for the blood he had spilled. 

A sigh slipped out of his mouth. He would deal with that day when it came. In the meantime, he had to be honest with her. He owed her that much.

“I asked you to marry me without knowing how long we could be together.”

It had only been seven weeks, but he never thought he’d have even that much. Just that amount of time had been more than he could ever ask for.

“Every day with you has been one day more than I ever thought I could have, and I’m grateful for that.” He stepped back so he could look at her clearly. “I’ll bring you back safely to your father’s house in Edo. I’ll find a way, I promise.”

“What?” She shook her head and clutched at his kimono more tightly. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want you to risk yourself for me. I don’t-” 

“But why?” He asked the question before he could change his mind. “You can get away from all of this. You can get away from-”

The word ‘me’ died on his lips. 

Limply he said, “You can go home. You don’t have to…” He forced the words out. “You don’t have to tell anyone who you married.”

“I married Himura Kenshin.” 

The words came out with more force than he’d expected - and perhaps more than she’d expected as well.

“I’m not sorry I married you, and I don’t want to keep it a secret.” She hesitated, then sagged against him. “And I want to stay here. With you.”

Again, he wrapped his arms around her. “Why?” He murmured the word into her hair.

“I already told you.” Her voice was muffled by his chest, breath warm against him. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, but I did.” She whispered the words. “I did.”

His breath caught. He didn’t deserve any of this, and yet...

She looked up at him, eyes wet and threatening to overflow. “I love you. Please…” She took a deep breath. “Let me stay with you.”

Something snapped inside of him then, and what little self-control he had managed to cling to evaporated in the warm air. 

He pressed his lips against hers desperately, before cupping her face in his hands and planting a line of kisses from her forehead to her chin. 

“I love you,” he breathed. “Tomoe, I-”

The door banged open, and Kenshin and Tomoe practically leaped away from each other. The doorway filled with a massive silhouette.

“Are the pair of you done making ridiculous cow eyes and simpering at one another?” Hiko folded his arms across his chest, but the scowl on his face didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Because I’d like to have dinner sometime before the moon comes out.”

Kenshin glanced at Tomoe and shrugged. “Sure, we’re done.” He waited a beat. “Shishou.”

Hiko glared at Kenshin, then glanced over at Tomoe with a flickering expression that was hard to read. It certainly couldn’t have meant approval… could it?

Tomoe wiped at her eyes. “I’ll put the rice on to boil.” A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and Kenshin nearly sagged in relief at the sight of it.

They ended up eating dinner outside. Tomoe brought the rice bucket out, and the three of them sat around the fire, eating skewers of grilled fish and bowlfuls of rice. They ate until the skewers were clean and the bucket empty.

That evening, Tomoe laid out all three futon as she always did, but this time she tugged Kenshin into his and then joined him, wrapping her arms around him and tucking her head under his chin.

It was his first truly restful sleep in some time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> My spiffy beta reader, an_earl, found me a video of Mount Atago even. With a shrine! And something that looks like Hiko's hut!
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> So I whiffed on twice weekly updates pretty quickly. The regular update schedule will be Sundays for the time being, with special, occasional updates on Thursdays as well. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> I love your comments, I love your kudos, I love talking to readers! Don't be shy, come say hi! You can also poke me on tumblr @frostyemma.


	7. Detente

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiko put out a hand to stop Kenshin advancing any further. “Last time, you walked off the mountain and I didn’t lift a finger to stop you. Now, if you want to leave, you will have to go through me.”
> 
> “You can’t-” Kenshin said the words through gritted teeth. “You can’t do that.”
> 
> “ _Can’t?_ ” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “And why exactly _can’t_ I? Unless you really did learn something new down there that you’d like to show me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Mizu manju : gelatinous rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste  
> Shogi : Japanese chess, more or less  
> Bokutou : wooden practice sword  
> Kiheitai : Ishin Shishi’s volunteer militia

_“Battoujutsu is a powerful technique on its own. In the hands of a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu master, however, it is death assured.”_

_Kenshin’s genpuku had been attended with all the gravity and ceremony that it deserved. Hiko had brought him all the way to Kyoto to meet with the most renowned swordsmith in the country, Arai Shakku. They returned several weeks later to collect the sword Shakku had forged for Kenshin, and the genpuku ceremony had been performed at a shrine not far from Shakku’s forge._

_Kenshin had been only twelve years old then._

_“By whipping the sword from its sheath and striking in the same motion, the speed and power of the attack can be multiplied several times over.”_

_Hiko had drilled Kenshin hard on battoujutsu techniques. Shown him how the exaggerated stance was beneficial both as a wide base for leverage and balance, as well as a means of psychological intimidation._

_“And with the godspeed of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, it is possible to begin and end your own stroke before your opponent’s blade has cleared its sheath.”_

_Any opponent who knew that stance would naturally expect a single devastating strike, and would be completely focused on dodging or countering it. However, Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu was invincible for good reason._

_“And every battoujutsu technique in Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is a dual-stage attack.”_

_Kenshin had painstakingly mastered the art of seamlessly integrating battoujutsu techniques into his already formidable Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu arsenal. He had learned how to re-sheath his sword, quickly and without looking at it, from any position. This had taken months and came at the cost of several cut fingers and even more losses of patience, but he had practiced - over and over again, and well into the night - until Hiko had been satisfied._

_“Come, I will show you.”_

**Founding year of Genji  
(early September 1864)**

The mood around the house had changed considerably over the past few weeks.

Kenshin and Tomoe were as inseparable as they were insufferable. The revelations of Tomoe’s past seemed to have driven them so tightly together that they had practically merged. It was not uncommon to see him assisting her in her housekeeping duties, or to see her crouching by his side as he tended the garden. Hiko had even caught Tomoe feeding Kenshin a piece of mizu manju, and he had barely contained his snort of bemusement. 

And, of course, they managed to disappear into the woods for a few hours every day, under the guise of needing to attend to some chore or another.

“I’m going to collect firewood.”

“And I’m going to help him collect firewood.”

They would inevitably return without firewood, and yet they continued to play at what they likely imagined was a very sophisticated bit of subterfuge. 

Kenshin continued to painstakingly work in the garden as well. 

He had planted carrots only a handful of days previously, and while the yams would not be ready until much later (“Another two months, probably,” Kenshin had said over his shoulder the other day as Tomoe brought out cups of cooled tea for the two of them) the cabbages were nearly ready for the table. 

Between Tomoe’s cooking and Kenshin’s farming, the winter was likely to be an easy one to get through. 

Hiko and Kenshin had suffered through leaner winters on Mount Atago before. Winters where poor weather had resulted in puny harvests that forced them to pickle every bit of what little yield Kenshin managed to coax out of the ground. 

While they had never gone hungry, relying on a repetitive diet of pickles and salted fish and rice had led to more than one explosive, altogether pointless argument that drove one or the other or the both of them out of the house. They ended up training while the wind and the snow howled around them, when anyone with a better sense of self-preservation would have hunkered down around the hearth and waited out the bitter cold.

Sometimes, one of them would venture outdoors in the biting cold and blowing snow to trap rabbits or hunt squirrels. Kenshin had returned triumphant once, three rabbits in hand, and they had enjoyed a hearty stew for days, as well as a temporary détente between them. 

But this winter would not be a lean one, even with the addition of a third person in the house. They had seen to that.

And Kenshin had seen to the détente as well. Or perhaps he had simply mastered the art of careful avoidance. 

He puttered around in the garden for hours every day, when years of watching the boy work the land told Hiko that he needed a mere fraction of the time at that point in the growing season. He played shogi every evening over cups of tea and safely stuck to anodyne topics such as the _weather_ \- it was still hot and humid - or the _garden_ \- it continued to grow - or his wife’s _cooking_ \- which was admittedly very good. 

When it had only been the pair of them, they had never wanted for topics of conversation. Of course, they had never lacked fuel for arguments either, but the arguments had been spirited rather than bitter. Now, Hiko realized with a feeling he did not particularly enjoy, Tomoe had become the glue that held the household together.

It was very clear that the boy did not want to be there and had remained only at his wife’s behest. And it was also clear that it would take very little - a rumor whispered in the village, perhaps - to send the fool careening back toward Kyoto, sword in hand, to whichever masters he believed he now owed his allegiance to.

And Hiko could not help the bitterness he felt at knowing the exact moment at which it had all gone wrong. 

While Kenshin should have listened to his shishou’s advice - his true master, not the forked-tongued ‘idealists’ in Kyoto who were now either dead or cowering in hiding - Hiko should have prevented his apprentice from leaving. 

By any means necessary.

Speaking of the boy, he stepped out of the bath shed and carefully eased the door closed behind him, a look of concern on his face.

“My wife isn’t feeling well,” he explained, and his face warmed the way it often did when speaking of Tomoe. “I thought a cool bath might help.”

Hiko looked over from where he was seated on the log-splitting stump, brow furrowed and sake saucer halfway to his mouth. “Too much sun, perhaps. She’s been spending a great deal of time outdoors with you lately.”

And indoors. And everywhere the pair of them could manage to steal a few moments.

“Yes, she has.” The love-struck expression lingered on Kenshin’s face for a moment, then abruptly the boy shifted. “I’ll be in the garden.”

“The garden can manage, I’m sure.” Hiko sipped his sake and watched Kenshin’s eager attempts to get away. “Unless you’re planning on harvesting the cabbages this instant.”

Kenshin glanced at him. “There’s always work to be done. You know that.”

“Of course there is.” Hiko let his eyes slide sideways toward the immaculately weeded garden, then back to his apprentice. “But you’ve done everything that needs to be done to the garden.”

The boy’s fingers twitched at that. Barely perceptible, but there all the same. 

“Anything worth doing is worth doing perfectly,” he said, and yes, Hiko might have said that to him once or twice or several times over the years. “Shishou.”

His idiot apprentice was balancing on a very thin rope indeed, speaking the way he did. Oh, he would never have shown outright disrespect - he was at least smart enough to know where that would lead - but Hiko got the message nonetheless.

“You’re the only person I know who can take an honorific and turn it into a pejorative.” Hiko tossed off the rest of his sake and gave Kenshin a sour look. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

A series of expressions, ranging from disappointment to surprise, flitted across the boy’s face before settling on resignation.

“Don’t know what you mean.” His tone was carefully neutral. “I’ll be collecting firewood then, if you need me.”

Hiko moved to block Kenshin’s path before he could get away. “I’ve done all that as well. In fact, there’s nothing I can think of that desperately needs doing right at this minute.” 

Resignation turned to frustration, and Hiko could practically see Kenshin trying to come up with some other chore. 

A slow smile spread its way out across Hiko’s face. “So all either of us needs to be doing right at this minute is having this little chat.”

Kenshin glowered up at him. “There’s always something to be done on a mountain away from everyone and everything.”

Hiko spread his hands. “The roof’s been patched. The firewood pile is high enough to get us through the next few months. The garden’s immaculate. We’ve salted fish away for the winter.” He arched an eyebrow at Kenshin. “Unless the real trouble is that you’re ‘away from everything’? Is that it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The boy spat the words out as if they were bitter.

“That’s it.” Hiko nodded, understanding. “All this time you’ve been here, you’ve only been counting the days until you can leave and head right back into the war.” His eyes narrowed and hardened. “You got away from that mess by nothing short of a miracle and you can’t wait to jump headfirst right back into the fire, can you?”

“I don’t-” Kenshin shook his head. Took a deep breath. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“Of course you don’t.” Hiko could feel the anger rising inside him like white-hot fire. “You never learned, did you?” 

Of all the lessons Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu had to teach, the last and greatest was the value of its practitioner’s own life. When Hiko had taken Kenshin in, he had vowed to give him everything he had to give - to teach him his deepest secrets. And if Kenshin hadn’t run off…

Would that lesson have cost him any less than the war had?

“I tried to teach you, but you never learned.”

“I’ve learned plenty of lessons I don’t care to repeat.” There was fire in the boy’s eyes now, but he managed to keep his voice carefully controlled. “And so long as I’m here, I’ll make myself useful.” He turned away. “We could always use more fish.”

“Stop right where you are.” Hiko’s voice crackled with authority. “So tell me. What have you learned?”

Kenshin didn’t turn around, but he made no further moves toward the house either. “I don’t want to do this right now.”

Hiko advanced on him. “No, tell me what you managed to learn by throwing yourself into that war that you wouldn’t have learned up here with me. Tell me what you learned from the mistakes you made, boy.”

“Don’t do this.” Kenshin still didn’t turn around. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Then don’t.” 

Tired of speaking to the back of his idiot apprentice’s head, Hiko reached out and grabbed Kenshin’s shoulder, spinning him roughly around so that they were face-to-face. 

“Don’t argue.” He glared down into Kenshin’s shocked but stubborn face. “Tell me what you learned down there that made leaving worth it. Tell me!”

“I don’t owe you an explanation!” 

As soon as the words were out of the boy’s mouth, his eyes widened and he stepped back. His breaths were shallow, ragged, but he fought to control them.

“You don’t _owe_ me?” Hiko stepped forward, his anger flaring. “Take a moment and think about the depths of stupidity you’ve just plumbed, and then think of something better to say to me.”

“Fine.” 

The boy had the wild look of someone who was about to do something very dangerous or very stupid, but no longer cared. 

“Fine, _Shishou._ ” He spat the word out as if he couldn’t bear the taste. “I am counting down the days - the _hours_ , even - because the world is not going to get any better if I’m hiding from it on a goddamn mountain!”

Hiko practically saw red. 

“After everything I’ve tried to teach you,” he snarled, “after everything I’ve given you, you still can’t wait to run away from me again and drag it all through the muck and blood.” 

“That is not-” Kenshin practically tripped over his own tongue in anger. 

“You _want_ to go back down there and use the gift I gave you to slaughter people wholesale on the orders of some self-elevated idealist who can’t be bothered to dirty his own hands-”

“You don’t know-”

“ - or who simply can’t wield a sword to save his own worthless life.” Hiko shook his head in disgust. “And you _still_ can’t even be bothered to call me ‘Shishou’ like you mean it!”

“That’s because we mutually agreed to end things!” Kenshin shouted the words loud enough that the birds started from the trees. 

“We didn’t mutually agree to a goddamned thing!” Hiko’s voice effortlessly overpowered Kenshin’s. “You decided to run off on your own and abandon your training in spite of everything I tried to tell you! And look where it’s gotten you!”

The boy stood there, panting and fire-eyed, until he abruptly turned and headed toward the woods. “This is so stupid. I’m not doing this -”

“Oh yes, you are.” Hiko was in front of him in the blink of an eye. “If you think I’m about to let you compound the stupidity of what you did a year ago, you’re an even bigger fool than I’ve ever given you credit for.” 

Kenshin glowered at him, real anger marring every bit of his face. 

Hiko put out a hand to stop Kenshin advancing any further. “Last time, you walked off the mountain and I didn’t lift a finger to stop you. Now, if you want to leave, you will have to go through me.”

“You can’t-” Kenshin said the words through gritted teeth. “You can’t do that.”

“ _Can’t?_ ” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “And why exactly _can’t_ I? Unless you really did learn something new down there that you’d like to show me?”

Kenshin’s shoulders shook with rage, but he said nothing, and so Hiko bent down to pick up a stick from the ground. It was rough and untrimmed, but its size and weight were good enough to make a passable bokutou. 

Good enough to beat some sense into his idiot apprentice, at least.

“Come, then.” 

He hooked a toe under a similar stick and kick-tossed it at Kenshin, who caught it neatly one-handed, still glaring at him. Hiko rolled his shoulders and took a lazy grip on his own stick. 

“Show me.”

The door to the bath shed opened. Tomoe stood in the doorway, wrapped in a yukata, confusion and concern clear on her face. 

“I don’t-” Kenshin started, but Hiko sprang forward with a nimble downward slash that he had to spring sideways to avoid.

Hiko, however, had anticipated this move and whirled instantly into the back-spinning Ryukansen counterstrike. Kenshin had no time or room to dodge and had to block it, the force of the blow sending him backwards several steps.

“Dodging to the side?” Hiko slung the makeshift bokutou over his shoulder and shook his head pityingly at Kenshin. “You’re not fighting in the city streets anymore, boy. When you have room to maneuver, use it.”

Kenshin simply glowered at him in response.

Hiko leapt forward again with a flurry of strikes - overhead, sideways, diagonal - forcing Kenshin to give ground and parry as best he could. Kenshin sprang high into the air to avoid a low sweeping cut to his legs and raised the stick high over his head as he came down, clearly intending to use his old favorite, the Ryutsuisen -

“Too easy to read!”

Hiko launched himself vertically upward to meet Kenshin, his upward Ryushousen smashing Kenshin hard in the ribs as Kenshin tried to execute his own downward strike.

Kenshin landed hard and crumpled to his knees, but levered himself to his feet with the stick in his hand and scowled defiantly at Hiko.

“Fancy maneuvers like that may work on the diplomats and low-rent bodyguards you’re used to encountering down there,” Hiko snorted. “But again, you’re not down there anymore.”

“And you just love that.” Kenshin darted forward with a diagonal upward slash. “Don’t you?”

Hiko blocked the strike and shoved Kenshin backward with all his considerable upper-body strength. Kenshin hadn’t planted his feet - he’d obviously been planning another stroke immediately afterward - and Hiko was able to create enough space with the shove to lash out with a solid kick to Kenshin’s chest.

“Having you here does have its benefits.” Hiko looked down at the stick in his hands, shifting his grip slightly. It had not cracked yet. Kenshin was awkwardly getting to his feet once more. “Not allowing your body count to rise, for instance.”

“I’ve taken no pleasure in it,” Kenshin said through gritted teeth. “But we’re trying to make a better world.”

Hiko rolled his eyes and lashed out almost casually with a downward strike as Kenshin sprang forward again. The sticks met with a sharp whack, and Kenshin disengaged quickly to try for a short and vicious upward slash. It was probably something he had practiced for close-quarters encounters in alleyways, and Hiko admitted grudgingly that it was a good bit of improvisation.

Against a master, though…

Hiko switched his grip on the stick, holding it with both hands like a short staff, and gave a sharp twist that parried Kenshin’s strike and left him open for a punch-like blow to the pit of the stomach with the butt end of the stick. 

“You’ve gotten lazy.” Hiko hooked the stick under Kenshin’s arm and hurled him away, where he sprawled on the ground and scrabbled back up to his knees, winded but still defiant. “Too used to cutting down lesser men in the dark. Men who can’t fight back. Is that all you’re good for anymore?”

It took Kenshin a moment to catch his breath, and Hiko took advantage of that moment to propel himself forward like a cannonball, slashing rapidly and repeatedly at Kenshin’s head with the unrelenting Ryusousen Garami.

“You went down there and offered your skills as a hitokiri.” Hiko pressed his advantage, keeping Kenshin on the defensive under an unceasing rain of blows, leaving his idiot apprentice no room for a counterstrike. “And that was how you thought you’d change the world for the better, boy?”

Kenshin went down into the dirt, and though he rolled back up onto one knee, he stayed that way, bracing the stick against the ground for balance.

“I went down there and joined the Kiheitai.” He heaved the words out. “They asked me-” He climbed shakily back to his feet. “They asked me if I would come to Kyoto.”

Hiko again slung the stick casually over his shoulder as he faced his idiot apprentice.

“And you agreed.” 

His words tasted as sour as they sounded. These men who had recruited his apprentice were the lowest kind of scum, getting a boy to do the killing they so desperately craved but could not - or would not - accomplish themselves. If he ever found out who they were…

“Knowing full well what they wanted of you?”

Hiko unslung the stick from his shoulder and brought it down with punishing force. If Kenshin had not leapt backwards, the blow would certainly have knocked him unconscious. As it was, the stick struck a deep furrow in the hard-packed earth, yet miraculously did not crack under the impact.

“If it means a better world for those who come after me?” Kenshin darted forward with a lunging stab. “Yes.”

Hiko leapt agilely straight upward, the stab passing harmlessly underneath him, and came down just to the left of the outstretched stick with a lightning-fast flick of his own makeshift bokutou that knocked Kenshin’s arm away.

“You think you can make the world a better place?” 

Hiko spat out a bitter laugh as he lashed out with the stick at Kenshin’s unprotected side. Kenshin sucked in his breath as the blow hit him, but managed to block the next strike and backpedal furiously to avoid further ones.

“Your skills are dull,” Hiko snarled over the crack of wood on wood as Kenshin went to total defense. “Your reactions are slow. And your mind is clouded by all the needless killing you’ve done.”

With a final splintering crack, Kenshin’s makeshift bokutou broke in his hand.

“Admit it, boy.” Hiko put the tip of his own stick under Kenshin’s chin and forced Kenshin to look him in the eyes. “You’ve accomplished nothing down there. Nothing but taking a good few steps down the road to ruin.”

“I just wanted to help.” Kenshin glared at him with angry, wet eyes. He slapped Hiko’s stick aside and tossed his own broken stick to the ground. “I wanted to do something to help.” 

“I know what you _wanted_ to do.” Hiko fixed Kenshin with a knife-edged glare. “But it’s nothing short of hubris to imagine that you can make the world a better place by working as a hitokiri.” 

An unreadable expression flitted across the boy’s face and he looked away.

“And it’s the pinnacle of foolishness to think that it’s possible to cut away the ugly parts of human nature with a sword.”

“So it’s better to do nothing?” Kenshin snorted. Shook his head. “I can’t believe that.”

“I can.” A deep note of bitterness wormed its way into Hiko’s voice.

Hadn’t he tried himself?

Hadn’t he wandered the length and breadth of the country, cutting down evil men only to realize that evil sprang from evil’s corpse like some demon ghost? Hadn’t he seen enough of man’s limitless capacity for cruelty and wanton destruction to know that no one man could bring it all to an end? That all he had been doing was trying to empty the sea with a soup spoon?

“Better that than to make things worse.” He gripped the stick in both hands until his knuckles whitened. “But I never suggested not doing anything. I only said that a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman has no business allying himself with an army or a government, because that will always mean that the choice of who dies by his sword will no longer be in his hands. Can you at least understand that?”

“I don’t…” The boy’s shoulders sagged. His voice was very quiet. “I don’t know.”

Hiko sighed heavily, a sound full of disappointment at his idiot apprentice and himself in equal measure.

“You’re not going back down this mountain,” he said with absolute conviction. “I don’t care if I have to forcibly restrain you this time. I let you go once before, and I’ve regretted it bitterly ever since.”

Kenshin looked up at that.

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to make the same mistake twice.”

...  
...

Kenshin and Hiko-san had begun whacking at one another with sticks - or, as they euphemistically referred to it, ‘training’ - nearly every day since their first escapade a couple of weeks previously.

That first encounter had been mesmerizing to watch, and, if Tomoe were being honest with herself, a little bit frightening as well. 

She’d seen Kenshin fight, of course, and his skills had seemed superhuman at the time. He was so fast, so agile, and so precise that it seemed nothing could touch him. But against Hiko-san, who could move with just as much speed despite being so much larger and stronger, Kenshin had been thoroughly beaten.

Still, that didn’t seem to have dissuaded Kenshin from doing the same thing again and again. And now, the staccato cracks of wood on wood (interspersed with the occasional dull thud of wood on flesh) were so commonly heard outside the house that she no longer stopped her work and watched the bouts anxiously. Instead, she remained focused on her housework as much as she could.

In all honesty, it was requiring more of her concentration every day. 

She was so exhausted lately. The other day, she had abruptly stopped washing the breakfast dishes when she realized she couldn’t stay on her feet for one more second. She had unfolded the futon and taken a nap only an hour or so after waking, and had been awoken around lunchtime by her very concerned husband.

For the past few days, she had begged off their nightly shogi games, choosing instead to crawl directly into her futon and go to sleep. One afternoon, she and Kenshin had taken a walk in the woods, looking for a little bit of recreational time, and instead she had fallen asleep with her head in his lap.

That part had been nice.

The taste of the fish had seemed very oily lately as well. She would eat a bite or two, pass the rest to Kenshin or Hiko-san, and eat two bowls of rice instead. The other day, she had sent Hiko-san down to the village to buy a few blocks of tofu. Perhaps a more mild taste would agree with her.

Just the thought of eating any more fish…

Her stomach lurched suddenly, and she managed to get outside before her breakfast splattered all over the ground.

Abruptly Kenshin and Hiko-san stopped whacking each other with sticks. 

Kenshin was by her side immediately, hand on her back. “Tomoe?”

“I… ugh…” She braced her hands on the ground as her back arched involuntarily, her stomach twisting as it heaved and her mouth full of the taste of acrid, burning bile. “Kenshin…”

If she could just get back inside… If she could just soak a cloth in the cool river water and wash her face and then lie back down for a little while, just long enough for her guts to stop heaving…

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kenshin give Hiko-san a look that she didn’t quite have the energy to parse, and then Kenshin was lifting her gently to her feet and bringing her back into the house, hand around her waist.

“You should get some rest,” he murmured. He guided her to the raised wooden floor, waited for her to sit down, and then moved to prepare her futon.

She sat there, feeling wrung out and utterly exhausted. Her face felt flushed, and her hands seemed numb and nerveless on her knees. She barely had the wherewithal to get her feet under her when Kenshin slipped an arm under her elbow to help her to her futon, and when she sank down onto it and felt the blanket settle down over her, it was as though iron weights were dragging her eyelids down.

When she awoke, the hut was dark and cool, and it took her a moment to realize Kenshin was sitting against the wall beside her.

“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

She blinked a few times, taking stock of herself. Apart from a particularly foul taste in her mouth, she felt fine. Slightly run-down, yes, but the sudden gut-wrenching sickness was nowhere to be found.

Until the following morning.

She awoke to an awful, churning feeling in her stomach and knew that if she sat up or attempted to move in any way, she would vomit up every bit of the tofu she had carefully prepared for last night’s dinner.

Kenshin slept obliviously beside her.

Oddly enough, she found herself wishing for the rice bucket. A bit of rice might have settled her stomach quite nicely. She shifted slightly, thinking of waking Kenshin and asking him to-

Terrible mistake.

Her stomach twisted horribly, the bile traveled up her throat, and she bolted out of the futon and clambered onto the dirt floor of the kitchen in her bare feet, just barely wrenching the door open before she lost last night’s dinner to the ground outside.

Once again, Kenshin was beside her before she fully registered his presence. “Again?” He was also bare-footed.

“What… ugh…” Tomoe spat once, twice, the taste of the scalding bile disgustingly familiar to her. “What is the matter with me?”

“I… I don’t…” Kenshin shook his head and took to gently rubbing her back.

“I don’t like the way this is shaping up.” Hiko-san was there suddenly, a huge looking presence with an unkempt mane of hair swinging in front of his face. He swept it out of his eyes, and Tomoe could read concern there.

“I’m going to get dressed and pay a visit to the shrine.” Hiko-san looked critically at Tomoe, then at Kenshin. “There’s bound to be someone there who knows medicine. I can have that person here in an hour.”

Tomoe wanted to say that going to the shrine for help was absurd, that all she needed was rest and perhaps some plain rice, but she was so utterly exhausted that all she could do was nod. If she had fallen ill, better to have medicine and recover quickly than to languish and perhaps have it become worse.

While Kenshin prepared a cup of tea, Tomoe washed up as best she could. She sat on the edge of the raised wooden floor, head on her husband’s shoulder, nursing the cup of tea and trying to will away any further bouts of nausea. 

Hiko-san returned carrying a portable tansu chest, a sharp-faced, middle-aged woman in a white kimono and pale blue hakama at his side.

“This is Chiba-san,” he offered. “The priest’s wife.”

Chiba-san directed Hiko-san to place the tansu chest on the wooden floor, then turned her sharp gaze on both Kenshin and Hiko-san in turn. 

“Both of you.” She waved toward the door. “Out.”

Hiko-san seemed to fluff up indignantly at the abrupt order for him to clear out of his own house, but Kenshin merely turned and headed for the door, tugging at Hiko-san’s sleeve so that he was forced to follow.

As the door slid closed behind them, Tomoe’s stomach clenched tightly. Whatever was the matter with her, it must have been very serious indeed, if Chiba-san had so unceremoniously exiled her husband and Hiko-san.

Chiba-san glanced at the cup in Tomoe’s hands. “What’s in the cup?” Without waiting for a reply, she began rummaging through the drawers of the tansu chest.

“Tea,” Tomoe murmured, not knowing whether it was a request for a cup, or whether Chiba-san was attempting to determine what had made her feel so ill, or whether it was something to distract her from more pointed questions to come.

“Ah, here we go.” Chiba-san held up what Tomoe recognized to be slivers of dried ginger before dropping a few pieces into the tea. “You can keep what I have, which isn’t much. You’ll want to send your husband down to the village for more.”

“I…” Tomoe looked down at the tea in utter bewilderment, then back up at Chiba-san’s impassive face with very much the same expression. “All right?”

Chiba-san peered at her for a moment. “You’re very young. Your husband, younger still. How old is he?”

“Fifteen summers.” Another question likely meant to either put her off guard or put her at ease. She wasn’t sure which tack was intended, but she knew which one was working. “But I don’t understand-”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” Chiba-san’s gaze sharpened. “Because there’s no other woman here. No wife for that mountain of a father-in-law?”

Tomoe felt her cheeks redden. Not only was it impossible for her to imagine the thought of Hiko-san with a wife, the thought of him as Kenshin’s father seemed a little too much for her to process at that moment.

“No,” she answered, still gazing at Chiba-san in complete confusion. “I’m sorry… I’ve been feeling ill lately. That was why Hiko-san went to fetch you.”

“Which is why I put the ginger in your tea.” Chiba-san waved toward the cup. “Well, go on. Drink it up.” She waited until Tomoe was in the midst of doing so to abruptly ask, “How long have you been married?”

Tomoe swallowed her tea a bit more quickly than she had intended. The hot liquid, strongly tasting of sharp and lemony ginger, was almost instantly soothing to her unsettled stomach. 

“Since the seventh month of this year.” She raised the cup to her nose, inhaling the aroma of steeping ginger, and took another sip, this one slower than the last. “But I’ve known him for longer.”

Chiba-san hummed in response to that, then watched as Tomoe took another sip of tea before asking, “And how long since your monthly courses stopped?”

Tomoe reddened again, the tea nearly choking her in her haste to swallow it before it spilled from her mouth in surprise.

Chiba-san either didn’t notice or pretended not to, and Tomoe was grateful for that small kindness. 

“Last month,” she said hoarsely.

“I have three living daughters,” Chiba-san explained, “and two children who left this world far too soon.” She sat with that for a moment, then abruptly moved on. “You learn to recognize the signs.”

Tomoe merely took another long swallow of the soothing ginger-flavored tea and waited.

“You’re with child,” Chiba-san said. “My guess is that the baby will come in late spring, though you’ll want to visit the midwife in the village to be certain. And you’ll want to come up to our shrine this winter for your Obi Iwai ritual.”

The floor seemed to drop away suddenly from underneath Tomoe, and it was only by an act of sheer desperation that she managed to stop herself from spilling tea all down her front.

A child?

_A baby?_

“I…” Her voice didn’t seem to be working properly. Nor did her mind. This was such news, such monumentally enormous news, that all of it did not seem to want to fit itself into her brain. “Oh.”

Chiba-san said a few more things and then shrugged the tansu chest onto her back, and Tomoe watched it all as if she were underwater. A few more words were exchanged - likely important, possibly including the name of the village midwife - and then Chiba-san took her leave.

Kenshin was in the house moments later, his eyes wide with concern. He said a few words that flowed past Tomoe without comprehension. 

“A baby.” Tomoe looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. “There’s going to be… a baby.”

Somehow, saying it seemed to make it more real. And all of a sudden, it became the most important thing in the world to see what Kenshin’s reaction would be.

“A baby?” he echoed. “Where?” 

It seemed as if his brain was taking a moment to catch up as well, though she could see the slowly dawning realization on his face. His eyes widened by degrees. 

“Oh,” he whispered. His eyes traveled down to her stomach and then back up to her face. “ _Oh._ ”

She nodded, still somewhat numb from shock. Her hands drifted to her stomach seemingly of their own accord. Nothing _felt_ different; it was impossible to imagine that there was a child in there at all, much less that a child would be coming out in just a few short months.

The thought made her dizzy, and she reached out to steady herself on something. Naturally, Kenshin was the nearest something at hand.

“It feels like a dream,” she murmured.

They sat with that for a moment, then abruptly Kenshin said, “Do you… what do you need? What can I get you? Or do?” His eyes were still wide. “What do you need me to do?”

It suddenly occurred to her, somewhat absurdly, that in moments like these, it was so very clear what sort of person Kenshin really was. He was not the demon that people who had never seen him before described him as in whispers. He was not the cold-blooded hitokiri the Ishin Shishi wanted him to be, no matter how hard he might have tried to fulfill those expectations. He was not the bumbling, wayward apprentice and prodigal son that Hiko-san insisted he was.

He was simply a young man. A very young man, with a noble heart, who wanted to do the best he could for those he cared about. And she loved him so very deeply for that.

“I’ll need some more ginger,” she said eventually, when the wide-eyed look of expectation did not waver.

“Ginger,” he repeated slowly, as if it were a very complex order he needed to commit to memory. “That’s easy enough. Ginger.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then reached out and pulled her gently against him before placing a kiss on top of her head.

“A baby,” he murmured. “We’re going to have a baby.”

She let herself settle against him, let herself listen to his heartbeat - far faster and louder than normal - and did her best to let his affectionate embrace do what it was intended to do.

Still, she thought silently, her hands finding the fabric of his kimono and bunching themselves up in it, the prospect of a baby was a bit frightening. For now that she thought about it, the only experiences with childbirth that she had seen had concerned her mother. 

Her fists trembled.

“There is one thing you can do for me.” She banished the dark thoughts from the front of her mind and tried to focus on what she needed at the moment. 

She didn’t want to look down at herself. She’d turned her stomach inside out not long ago, she was soaked in sweat, and both she and her clothes badly needed a washing.

“You can heat up the bath.”

...  
...

It was only after Kenshin had prepared the bath and seen Tomoe settled that he allowed himself to sit with the news.

A _baby._

He had never even held a baby, and now they were going to have one, and if he tried to think too long and too hard about what that meant, his mind just seemed to… stop working.

They were going to have a _baby._

He found himself sitting on the same fallen log he used to practice his jumps from, and for an absurd moment, he wondered if the baby would do the same thing when he or she was older, and that was too much, much too much to think about right then, and-

A baby.

He lost track of how long he sat there, but Hiko returned from walking Chiba-san back to the shrine and Tomoe still hadn’t come out of the bath shed, and he didn’t know what to do with any of those thoughts.

“So?” Hiko said without preamble, resting his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Chiba-san didn’t see fit to tell me what’s wrong with your wife, but it can’t have been too dire, or else she wouldn’t have left so soon.”

Kenshin looked up at him for a long moment, trying to form the correct words to explain everything. Nothing came to him.

“I need…” He rubbed at his forehead. “I need to go down to the village and buy ginger for Tomoe.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Hiko’s brows knit. “And what’s the matter with you? Anyone would think it was your stomach that was being uncooperative.”

Kenshin let out a startled bark of humorless laughter at that. 

How was any of this going to work? Where would they put a baby? Even that thought was too much, far too much, and he didn’t know where to go with that thought or what he was supposed to say or…

“I don’t know.” His heart was beating way too fast. 

“All right.” Hiko sat down on a stone directly across from Kenshin, braced his hands on his knees, and stared intently at him. His voice was slow and deliberate, his words clipped. “Tell me, right now and as simply as you can, what is the matter with your wife.”

Kenshin looked at him with wide eyes. 

“A baby.” He swallowed. His throat felt very dry suddenly. “There’s going to be… a baby.”

An extraordinary series of expressions crossed Hiko’s face in the span of the next few seconds, but what eventually settled there was… amusement?

“Well, I can’t exactly say I’m surprised.” He sat back, evidently relieved, if his tone of voice was anything to judge by. “The two of you have been trying hard enough.”

“What?” Kenshin nearly fell off the log at that. “What the hell kind of- how could you say-” 

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Hiko actually smirked, clearly enjoying himself. “All those walks out to the woods to ‘gather firewood’? And not so much as a dry twig in either of your hands when you came back?” He chuckled. “You could hardly have expected anything different.”

Kenshin glowered at him, though there was no real heat behind it.

“Stay there.” Hiko got to his feet, still smirking, and headed back into the house. He reemerged a moment later with the sake jug and a pair of cups, resumed his seat on the stone, and poured.

“Well,” he said, handing one cup over to Kenshin and keeping the other for himself. “I suppose this means that the pair of you will be staying here indefinitely, then?”

The words came out before Kenshin could stop them. “With _you_? And a _baby?_ ”

Both thoughts were too much. Far too much, and he knocked back the entire cup of sake in one gulp. It tasted…

Fine, actually. 

He held out the cup for a refill.

“I’ll be damned.” Hiko chuckled, pouring the sake. “You’re finally beginning to understand the reason I drink so much.”

Kenshin didn’t dignify that with a response. He downed the refill in one long swallow and decided to go for another. He was already day drinking on an empty stomach, after all.

“It’s an improvement.” Hiko sipped his own sake. “Considering you usually _are_ the reason I drink so much.” He sighed. “And now there’s going to be another one.”

Kenshin ignored that too, though he sipped at the sake this time. He didn’t want to be falling down at Tomoe’s feet the second she came out of the bath.

Hiko lifted his cup fractionally and met Kenshin’s eyes. “Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Kenshin murmured, but then his real thoughts came pouring out before he could think better of it. “How are we supposed to do this? Have a baby? With everything else that’s going on in the world?

The sake had no answers for him, but it felt good going down, so that was something.

“When I asked her to marry me, I thought…” He rubbed at his forehead, took a breath, and decided to be out with it. “I thought that it couldn’t possibly last very long. That I’d be happy with however long I got with her, and when it was over…”

Because he had fully expected to be dead, whether that took six months or a year. 

“When it was over, she could live whatever life she wanted.” He stared into his sake cup. “Think I might have messed that up a bit for her.”

Hiko gave him a look that might have been annoyance or pity, possibly both, but before Kenshin could decide, Hiko spoke as if reading his mind. 

“By living longer than you expected to?” He shook his head. “Try suggesting that to her and see how long it takes for her to lose her last meal again.”

Kenshin opened his mouth and just as quickly snapped it shut again.

If he died, Tomoe would lose the second man she had loved, to the same conflict and likely in much the same way. And while she had forgiven him for the death of her fiance, he was quite certain she wouldn’t forgive him for then turning around and dying on her.

“This has gotten…” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Complicated.”

Hiko gave a loud snort at that. “Life tends to do that when you bring other people into it.”

Kenshin looked at him. Raised an eyebrow. “So now what?”

“Now?” Hiko refilled both sake cups and took what looked like a deliberately slow sip from his own, probably for effect. “You look after your wife until she’s given birth, and you look after your wife and the child afterwards.” He narrowed his eyes at Kenshin. “And you stay away from the war, if you’ve got the slightest bit of sense.”

Despite his shishou’s frequent assertions that Kenshin was, in fact, an idiot, he was smart enough to ignore that last point for the time being. Nothing good would come from that argument right then.

“Of course I’m going to look after her.” He sipped at his sake. “But I know we can’t do it here. I’m grateful that you’ve let us stay, despite,” he gestured vaguely about, “everything, but we’re guests and it’s going to get crowded.”

“Oh, shut up.” Hiko rolled his eyes. “This is your home, you idiot. You can’t be a guest in your own home.”

“You hate people,” Kenshin said flatly.

“I do.” Hiko shrugged. “And for very good reason. But I fail to see how that contradicts anything I’ve just said to you.”

“And I fail to see how you’d want anyone staying ‘indefinitely-” Kenshin pointed to him. “Your words, not mine - when you hate people.”

“Because I don’t particularly want to see you repeating your idiotic mistakes.” Hiko scowled. “And however much I may dislike people, I don’t particularly want your wife or the child hurt.”

Kenshin took a long swallow of sake in response to that.

It was real.

He and Tomoe were going to have a baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> OHOHO! The plot thickens! And yet, there are still several issues that haven't been tackled yet. (The Yaminobu, Tomoe's darling little brother, that whole war thing they're avoiding). Where do you think it might go next?
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Speaking of the thickening plot, Chiba-san mentioned the Obi Iwai ritual. This is a Shinto ceremony meant to ensure the smooth and safe delivery of a baby. I didn't want to stick that in the glossary, because why spoil the reveal?
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> This chapter was unbeta'd, so any mistakes are on me! But that being said, your comments, questions, and kudos are what makes this fun. Don't be shy, come talk to me! You can also chat with me on tumblr @ frostyemma.


	8. Sibling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Neechan!”
> 
> Her heart thudded once, hard and sharp, startling her as though she’d been hit. She must have imagined it; there was no way she could have heard his voice here…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Obi Iwai : Shinto ritual meant for the safe delivery of a baby  
> Shogi : Japanese chess, more or less  
> Miko : shrine maiden, usually the daughter or granddaughter of the priest  
> Dango : chewy rice dumplings on a stick  
> Tabi : split-toe socks  
> Obasan : polite term for older woman

**Founding year of Genji  
(January 1865)**

The past few months had gone by in what seemed like an eyeblink.

The harvest had gone very well. Kenshin had brought in more vegetables than Tomoe thought they would have ever been able to use. Though, as Kenshin had explained, it wasn’t likely to seem so plentiful once the winter was well underway. They had pickled most of the harvest to sustain them throughout the cold weather, and the last of the fresh vegetables were gone now.

The weather had grown deeply cold, much colder than Tomoe had ever felt down in Edo. They had woken up one morning to discover a thick blanket of snow on the ground, and while it was lovely to look at, it made life extremely difficult. In particular, it made journeying down the mountain nothing short of treacherous, which gave Tomoe and Kenshin no end of frustration.

They had made the journey down to the village at least twice a month since learning about the baby, and they had visited the midwife each time. Tomoe’s belly had begun to swell noticeably over the past month, and Kenshin had insisted that he could hear the baby’s heartbeat when he rested his ear against the tightening skin of her stomach. 

But with the snow, it had become much more difficult and time-consuming to make the trip back and forth to the village, and Tomoe privately suspected that another heavy snowfall would make it impossible.

“Which is why we’re going up to the shrine tomorrow for my Obi Iwai,” she explained to Hiko-san over shogi one evening. (He and Kenshin were playing, and truth be told, neither of them were terribly good yet.)

“You’ll want to leave as early as possible.” Hiko frowned down at the board and moved his gold general one rank forward - a move that would have lost him the game in short order if he’d been playing against her. “I don’t know what the conditions are like that far up the mountain, but I doubt it’ll be pleasant to climb all those steps if they’re covered with ice and snow. And I certainly don’t want you coming back in the dark.”

“Traditionally, the entire family attends Obi Iwai.” Tomoe sipped at her tea. “So I would think that you’ll be coming along as well. And then you need not concern yourself with how we might fare on the steps.”

She pretended not to notice that Kenshin nearly spit tea back into his cup.

The next morning, the three of them made the climb up to the shrine. Fortunately, the dirt-packed steps had not iced over, and while Tomoe’s condition meant that they all had to take it slowly, they made it there safely.

A miko - one of Chiba-san’s daughters - served them tea, and after Kenshin deposited a few coins into the offering box, Chiba-san took Tomoe into a private room.

“You seem to be progressing well.” Chiba-san carefully unfolded a white cotton obi as Tomoe disrobed. “You look healthy.”

“I feel much better.” Tomoe shivered slightly as the cold air hit her bare skin. “Since the nausea stopped, at least. Now the only trouble is that it’s beginning to get more difficult to move around.”

“Yes, get your walks down to the village while you can.” Chiba-san turned her sharp-faced gaze on Tomoe, obi in hand. “Now traditionally, your mother-in-law does the honors, but your mountain of a father-in-law has no wife and I doubt you want him doing this instead.”

Tomoe considered it just long enough to frighten herself, then shook her head emphatically.

Chiba-san snorted. “I thought as much.” 

She had a swift but gentle touch, and before long, the soft cotton obi was wrapped several times around Tomoe’s midsection. 

“There.” Chiba-san sat back on her heels and admired her handiwork for a moment before leading Tomoe through a prayer requesting a smooth delivery and a healthy baby. “You are now officially with child.”

“Thank you.” Tomoe smiled gently and took one of Chiba-san’s hands in both of hers. “It’s so difficult to believe sometimes.”

“It’s always difficult the first time.” Gracefully Chiba-san rose to her feet and helped Tomoe slide back into her layers of clothing. “But you’ll definitely believe come spring.”

Tomoe bowed as gracefully as she could - that would become difficult during the coming months, she thought somewhat ruefully - and turned to go. But another thought struck her suddenly as she left the room: what if the prayer didn’t work? What if, instead of a smooth delivery and a healthy baby…

She banished that thought quickly and decisively, before it could lead to a dark place that she would not be able to come back from, and hurried out to meet her husband and (she smiled at the thought) her ‘mountain of a father-in-law’.

The following day, the weather being crisp but the sky bright and cloudless, she and Kenshin decided to head down the mountain and into the village while they still had the chance. The climb down was still slow going, and she suspected it would be worse going back up, but at least there was no chance of a snowfall that day.

“I can always carry you back up,” Kenshin offered. He hadn’t let go of her hand the entire journey. “Just like the first time.”

“I’m a bit more…” She frowned. “... _cumbersome_ than I was then.”

He shook his head. “No, you aren’t.”

She looked over at him wryly. “You don’t have to say that, you know. I’m supposed to be getting bigger.”

He shrugged. “Still not cumbersome.”

“Unwieldy, then.” She shrugged back. “Or perhaps just heavy.”

He glanced at her. “There’s more than one way to carry you, you know.” 

Without waiting for a reply, he swept her off her feet, holding her in both arms as if she were an Imperial princess being carried by a loyal retainer.

“See?” He nudged his nose against hers, ridiculously proud smile on his face.

She offered him a small smile and nudged back. “You’re very sweet.”

Privately, she thought she might prefer to walk - at least for as long as she was comfortably able to. By the time spring came, she was likely to be more than happy to have Kenshin ferry her even the few steps from the house to the bath.

Still, she had to admit that it was nice to be off her feet. And Kenshin’s deceptively strong arms seemed to have no trouble bearing her admittedly increased weight.

“You don’t have to do this all the way to the village, though.”

“I know, I know.” A moment later, he returned her steadily to her feet and slipped his hand back into hers. “I remember what you said the midwife told you: exercise, so long as it’s not strenuous, is healthy for you and the baby.”

“Speaking of Onba-san,” she said, squeezing his hand while picking her way carefully down the trail. “Perhaps I should stop in to see her while we’re there. Just to let her know that I may not be able to come back for a while.”

“And I’ll be waiting for you with a stick of dango.” Kenshin smiled at her. “Or two.”

Tomoe might have eaten a stick of dango (or perhaps two) every time they had come down to the village to see the midwife. And Kenshin, being the unfailingly sweet man that he was, never forgot to find one (or two) for her.

“No, no,” she said hastily. “I’ll only want one.”

Onba-san, it turned out, had no news at all for her. She merely advised staying as comfortable and warm as possible during the winter, making sure that she ate what her body told her to eat (no matter how ridiculous or unappetizing it might have seemed to anyone else) and making the trip down to see her again as soon as the spring thaw permitted.

Outside Onba-san’s house, Kenshin was waiting for her with two sticks of dango and a smile. 

“No, no, I insist.” Gently Tomoe pushed the second stick of dango back toward him, and after a mere moment’s hesitation, he polished off the whole stick.

And as it turned out, she ate her stick of much-too-small dango (why did they only put _three_ on a stick?) in record time and found herself looking longingly toward the dango seller.

“So satisfying.” Kenshin licked the syrup off the tips of his fingers. “Right?”

She tried not to look pleadingly at him.

“I’m so full,” he added. “So satiated.”

Her pleading look quickly turned to a glower that would have made Hiko-san proud.

“I might be wrong, but…” Kenshin raised an eyebrow. “It seems like you might care for another one?”

“I might.” She looked over at the dango seller again. “...Maybe another two.”

“Of course.” He rose from the bench they had been sitting on. “We should get a bowl of soba before we head back though.” 

He headed off toward the dango seller’s cart at a leisurely pace, and Tomoe suddenly found herself fixated on how wonderful a hot bowl of soba would feel in her stomach during the walk home. And, of course, how pleasant it would be to sit down inside the soba restaurant while they ate and absorb the warmth before heading back up the chilly mountain trail. And that perhaps they could purchase a small bundle of dry soba from the restaurant and she could make it for-

“Neechan!”

Her heart thudded once, hard and sharp, startling her as though she’d been hit. She must have imagined it; there was no way she could have heard his voice here… 

Enishi was in front of her suddenly. He was absolutely filthy from head to toe, his kimono and hakama looked as if they hadn’t been laundered in years, and his tabi socks had gone nearly black with grime, but it was undeniably him.

“I can’t believe I found you here!” he was saying, and she stared at him in utter shock.

“Enishi?” she finally managed, her voice coming out as a croak through her astonishment. “How did… what happened to…” She shook her head firmly to clear it. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” he returned easily. “You just disappeared. No one knew where you were. You’ve been missing for _months_.”

He launched himself at her suddenly and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, burying his face in her neck.

“I missed you so much.” His words were muffled. “No one knew what happened to you.”

Her hands went up automatically to embrace him, and she received a second shock when she easily felt his ribs through the fabric of his kimono. He looked (and smelled) absolutely filthy, he was clearly starving - anyone would think that he’d had no one looking after him for-

Oh no.

“Otousan?” she asked, another ice-cold blow striking her heart. “Is he all right? Did you leave because…?”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

“Because what?” Enishi pulled back and looked at her. “He’s _fine_. He’s probably, I don’t know, sitting in the house, looking at his precious books right this second.” He scowled. “Who cares?”

She breathed a sigh of relief at that. Still, she frowned at her ragged scarecrow of a brother.

“He’s your father, Enishi. He’s _our_ father.” She looked at him critically. “And he’d be appalled to see you like this, looking like you haven’t had a meal or a bath in months.”

Enishi shrugged. “Well, he’s not here, so it doesn’t matter.” His scowl melted away. “But you are, and I am, so-”

“So the obasan noticed how hungry you were.” Kenshin returned, three sticks of dango in hand. “And she threw in an extra one. Just for you.”

Enishi turned, and the change that came over him was immediate.

“Battousai!” His face twisted into an ugly scowl, and Tomoe could practically _feel_ the hatred in his eyes. “What’s he doing here?”

Tomoe kept herself from cringing with supreme effort.

“He -” She looked over at Kenshin, anxiety burning hot in her chest, then back at her glowering brother. “He’s… seeing me into town.”

Kenshin raised an eyebrow at that, but mercifully didn’t say anything.

“Seeing you into town to do _what_?” Enishi demanded, and Tomoe had the sudden, bizarre idea that he was seconds away from physically launching himself at her husband.

Her husband.

“Enishi, please,” she heard herself pleading, and she hated the way it sounded. She forced herself to adopt the tone she used when taking him to task as a little boy. “Settle down.”

Enishi glowered at that, but at least he stayed put.

Tomoe took a deep breath and turned to Kenshin, searching his face for some sign of understanding. “Kenshin, this is my brother Enishi.” She turned back to Enishi. “Enishi, this is Himura Kenshin.”

She took a deeper breath.

“My husband.”

She supposed it was to Enishi’s credit that he did not explode right then and there, but his face went nearly incandescent with rage.

“It looks like you two might need a moment,” Kenshin said mildly, pushing all three sticks of dango into Tomoe’s hand. 

“Yes, we need a moment,” Enishi snarled through gritted teeth. “We need every moment. We need _all_ the moments.”

“I’ll be at the soba restaurant.” Kenshin turned and beat a hasty retreat, and none of the frantically pleading glances Tomoe threw at him affected that retreat in the slightest.

“I know it’s something of a surprise,” Tomoe murmured, free hand fidgeting in her lap as she cast about for something to say, for anything that would help explain to Enishi what was really happening, but she finally seized on her own surprise. “How did you get all the way out here, anyway?”

“What?”

Enishi blinked - once, twice - and then he did explode.

“What do you mean, how did I get all the way out here?” His eyes were wild. “What does it matter? Who cares? What is he - what is _Battousai_ -” He jabbed a finger in the empty spot where Kenshin had stood. “Of all people - of anyone, anyone in the whole, stupid world - what is that monster doing here? Married? To you?”

Tomoe’s mind had suddenly gone blank.

In Kyoto, living at the inn with Kenshin and growing closer to him day by day, she could have answered that question easily. Up on the mountain, with Hiko-san chopping wood in the yard and Kenshin working in the garden while she bustled about the kitchen, everything made perfect sense. 

But she could not think of anything to say to her enraged little brother that would even begin to make him understand what had happened between her and Kenshin.

“It’s…” Her throat had gone suddenly dry, and she swallowed hard. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s not complicated!” Enishi stamped his foot in frustration. “He killed Kiyosato-san, remember? He did that!” Again, he pointed to nothing. “He did that, it was him, it was all him, and he’s supposed to be dead, and you wanted him dead!” His voice got more and more shrill. “So what’s going on?”

“Keep your voice down!” she whispered, suddenly horribly afraid that someone would come to see what he was yelling about and that it would all end awfully. “Enishi, please.” 

The pleading note had come back into her voice and, hate it though she might, she couldn’t do a thing about it. 

She reached out and put her hands on his shoulders, heedless of the dango she still held. “You just need to understand. Just like I needed to understand.”

Enishi took a breath - for a horrible moment, Tomoe was afraid he would start screaming - and snatched one of the dango sticks out of her hand. He gobbled all three dango down in a flash, then wiped his mouth with the back of his filthy sleeve.

“Did he force you?” 

“What?” She recoiled, her face suddenly twisting into a grimace. “No! What… why would you…?” She shook her head, her hands tightening on his shoulders. “No. No, he did not. He would never.”

Enishi wolfed down another dango stick, barely pausing to take a breath. Thankfully, he didn’t speak until he was done chewing.

“He didn’t force you to marry him?” Again, he wiped his sleeve across his mouth. It didn’t do much good. “I don’t believe that.”

It took a moment for that to register. When it did, though, Tomoe just barely refrained from rolling her eyes in utter exasperation.

“He asked me.” She looked him in the eyes. “I said yes. We were married at a little shrine outside the city the day after the Kyoto fire.” A hush crept into her voice. “We just barely got out of there alive.”

Enishi returned the whisper, but there was ugliness in his tone. “I wish he hadn’t gotten out of there alive. He should be dead.” That didn’t stop him from grabbing the last dango stick. “He should be dead for what he did to you.”

“He saved my life, Enishi.” 

She closed her eyes, the awful and ugly images of their headlong flight from the burning wreckage of Kyoto pulsating in her mind. The blood, the fire, the flashing blades and the hideous noises…

“If he hadn’t gotten us out of the city, I would have died.”

Enishi scowled in response to that.

She wanted to say more, wanted to make Enishi understand that Kenshin was different, wanted to make him see Kenshin the way she saw him, but she found herself instead looking at him with a critical eye.

“You need to come with me.” She thought only of getting him clean, fed, and under a roof before the snow began to fall in earnest. She’d think of how to explain it to Hiko-san on the way.

They found Kenshin in the corner of the dirt-floor soba restaurant, nursing a cup of tea at a long table, sword propped against the bench. Maybe it was the promise of food that kept Enishi quiet, though that didn’t stop him from throwing ugly looks Kenshin’s way.

Enishi didn’t hesitate to dig into his bowl of kitsune soba the second it was placed in front of him, barely pausing to mutter the briefest word of appreciation before inhaling the salty noodles. 

“When was the last time you had a decent meal?” It hadn’t escaped Tomoe that he’d practically inhaled every single one of the dango as well. “Or a bath? Or a change of clothes? And where have you been sleeping, anyway?”

“You ask a lot of questions, Neechan,” Enishi said around a mouthful of fried tofu. 

“It’s my job.” 

Worry began to set in. How long had Enishi been on his own? And what had he been doing to take care of himself?

Clearly not enough.

“And how long were you going to wander around this village before you found me?” Her eyes narrowed. “What are you actually doing here, anyway?”

“Looking for you.” He slurped up a mouthful of noodles. “I didn’t know you were here. I just got lucky.”

Kenshin seemed content to focus on his own bowl of soba, though Tomoe didn’t miss the slight furrow in his brow either.

“Why would you look for me here?” Tomoe pressed. “Why here, of all places?”

Enishi glanced up at her and scowled. “I didn’t know you were here, Neechan, but here is near Kyoto, and I was looking everywhere near Kyoto.”

Kenshin hummed into his soba.

A quick glance out the window showed Tomoe that it was already later in the afternoon than she had wanted to stay in the village. Even with no chance of snow, the weather would get very cold as the sun set. And since there was absolutely no way she would even consider leaving Enishi here…

“Are you finished eating?” she asked suddenly, her voice crisp once more as she found something authoritative to focus on. “Because we’ve got a very long walk ahead of us.”

“Where are we walking?” Enishi asked, fried tofu cake hanging out of his mouth. “Because it will take us at least a fortnight to walk to Edo. Maybe longer if it snows.”

“We’re not going to Edo.” Tomoe shook her head. “We can’t, not now. It’s too dangerous.”

Kenshin opened his mouth, hesitated, then ate his last fried tofu cake. 

“Then what-” Enishi looked at Tomoe with wide eyes. “Where-? I wanted to take you back home.”

Tomoe looked over at Kenshin, wanting to put a hand on his arm, or his shoulder, or his thigh, but knowing that doing so would only provoke an outburst from Enishi.

“You need to come home with us,” she said simply, looking back at her brother.

“Wha-?” Enishi snorted soba broth through his nose and promptly started coughing.

Kenshin stood, carefully tucked his sword into his belt, and left a few coins on the table. “We’d better get going then.” He looked at Tomoe. “Did you want some dry soba to take home?”

Tomoe felt a sudden rush of gratitude toward her wonderful husband, who, instead of asking difficult and uncomfortable questions, simply helped her to do what needed to be done at the time.

“Yes, I think that would be wonderful.” She felt a relieved sort of smile creep onto her face. “Hiko-san will probably think so as well.”

“Who’s Hiko-san?” Enishi gurgled, broth dripping out of his nose and back into the bowl.

“My shishou.” Kenshin ambled over to the hostess hovering by the front door to buy the dry soba.

Enishi slammed his palm down on the table, earning him a dirty look from another patron. “His shishou?” He glared at Tomoe. “There’s another one of him?”

Tomoe recalled saying the same thing almost word for word not long ago.

“It’s his home that we live in,” she offered, as she got to her feet somewhat awkwardly and beckoned for Enishi to follow her. “He’s very… kind.”

...

“I don’t care who he is or where you found him,” Hiko-san growled, looking very critically at Enishi. 

He stood in the doorway of the house, the rest of them standing in the clearing in front. He had evidently heard them approaching and come to the door to greet them, but his first words to them had been a demand to know why they were bringing ‘a scruffy vagabond’ home with them. 

“He’s not setting foot in this house until he’s clean.” He glowered at them, his massive arms folded across his equally massive chest. “I can’t tell where his clothes end and his skin begins, and he’s probably crawling with fleas.”

Tomoe, who privately agreed with Hiko-san about the state of filth Enishi had inflicted on himself, put a hand on Enishi’s shoulder to restrain him - she could practically feel him bristle at the comment.

“Of course he’ll bathe before he comes in.” She bowed somewhat clumsily. “Thank you so much for letting him stay.”

Kenshin had already disappeared to light the fire for the bath. 

“I’m not crawling with fleas,” Enishi groused, once Tomoe had shoved him bodily inside the bath shed. “I don’t even know him, but I know that I hate him.”

“Yes, well.” Tomoe pulled the door shut and began preparing the soap. “Hate him all you like, but he’s still right about how dirty you are.” She gave his filthy clothes a distasteful look. “And I don’t blame him for not wanting you in the house until you’re clean. Now, off with those clothes.”

“It’s cold! And it’s dark! And that’s not a tub, it’s a rain barrel!” Enishi protested. “And there are trees everywhere!”

Tomoe looked at him disbelievingly. “It’s a forest.”

“Yeah, well…” Enishi folded his arms and glared at her through a faceful of dirt. “I’m not getting naked on this… this murder mountain.”

“Murder moun-” Tomoe shook her head in undisguised annoyance. “Oh, Enishi, stop being so difficult. It’s just a mountain. There’s nothing murderous about it. Now take off those filthy clothes so that I can wash you.”

He stamped his foot. “No!”

“Fine.” She glowered at him (she’d seen enough of Hiko-san’s intimidating glares to have gotten fairly good at imitating them) and reached out for Enishi. “I’ll do it myself.”

“No!” Enishi backpedaled and immediately bumped up against the edge of the tub. “I can wash myself, you know.” All the same, he yanked at the ties of his hakama. “I don’t need you to wash me, Neechan.”

“You haven’t done a very good job of it lately,” she sighed, but she stepped back and let him continue. “And besides, you’ll need help with your hair and your back.”

“I’m ten years old!” 

“Exactly.” She gestured at him. “Hurry up, then.”

His filthy clothing ended up in a pile, and though Tomoe was loath to touch them, she forced herself to fold each piece and carefully set it aside. She supposed she should have been thankful nothing crawled out from between the folds.

Enishi howled his way throughout the entire washing process, though Tomoe had to admit she wasn’t exactly gentle about the whole thing.

“Please hold still.” She tried to scrub at his scalp through the tangles of his hair and felt something prick her finger. “Is this…?” 

A moment’s worth of digging in Enishi’s bird’s nest of soapy hair was enough to dislodge a spiky ball the size of a cherry stone.

“A burdock seed.” She grimaced as the thing’s spines dug painfully into her fingertips, but managed to extricate it from Enishi’s hair. “Didn’t you feel it?”

“No.” Enishi stared in awe at the thing and held out a soapy hand. “Give it.”

“What?” She looked at him, scandalized. “Why? So you can show Hiko-san that you were dirty enough to have plants trying to grow in your hair?” 

Over Enishi’s protests, she shook her hand frantically out the door, the stubborn thing clinging to her for all it was worth, and finally freed herself of it.

“It was my burdock seed, Neechan.” He folded his arms, and Tomoe went right back to scrubbing his awful nest of hair. “It chose me. And I could have done lots of things with it.”

Tomoe just barely refrained from rolling her eyes. 

Under his breath, Enishi muttered, “Like stick it in Battousai’s bed.”

“Stop that.” She might have dug her fingers in a bit more harshly than was necessary. “I don’t want you doing anything of the sort. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Enishi snorted. “You’re right, Neechan. He deserves a lot more than a burdock seed for murdering Kiyosato-san and stealing your happiness.”

She closed her eyes, feeling the anger radiate off her brother in waves and knowing that the same anger had possessed her not so long ago. Knowing what it had done to her… what it had almost done to her… 

“I am happy, Enishi,” she said softly, her hands coming to rest in his hair. “I don’t think I knew how to show it before, but I do now.”

“Ew,” Enishi said promptly. “Happy with a killer?” Mock horror dripped from his voice. “What would _Otousan_ say?”

Tomoe sighed.

“He might at least try to listen to me before hiding behind mockery.” She got to work on his hair again. “If anyone is to blame for Kiyosato-sama’s death, it should be me.”

It still felt deeply painful to admit it, but the truth was the truth.

Enishi scowled. “You’re not the one who murdered him, Neechan.”

“I made him think that he had to prove his love for me.” She bit the inside of her lip. “I didn’t let him know how pleased I was that we were going to be married. He thought I didn’t love him, and that he needed to do something to make himself worthy of me, and so he went off to Kyoto.”

“Well then he was stupid,” Enishi said flatly. 

“Oh, stop it.” She slapped the top of his head with a satisfyingly wet thwack. 

“Owww,” Enishi whined. He rubbed at his head, and Tomoe swatted his hand aside. 

“Stop being so angry at everyone. It’s never done you any good, and it never will.”

At long last, after what felt like hours’ worth of scrubbing and a great deal of struggle and complaint from Enishi, the layers of dirt were gone and the last of the tangles painstakingly undone. Tomoe ordered Enishi into the tub, which he got into after only a token bit of griping, and then went to the house in search of clean clothing. 

Kenshin had dug out a hakama and training gi from the shed that had belonged to him when he had been a boy. They were very well-worn, but clean and quite soft, and certainly better for Enishi to climb into after his bath than the dirty and malodorous clothes he had worn in the village, which now sat in the washing bucket.

When she returned to the bath shed, clean clothes draped over one arm, she found him slumped in the tub with his face slack and his eyes half-closed.

“Don’t fall asleep in the tub,” she admonished. “You’ll drown.”

“It’s not even a real tub. It’s a _rain barrel_.” He blew out a watery breath. “And I’m not going to drown, Neechan. You worry too much.”

“A handful of hours ago, you were filthy, starving, and homeless.” She leveled a stony look at him. “Of course I’m worried about you.”

He turned and looked at her, opened his mouth once or twice, then seized his attention on the clothes still hanging on her arm. “What’s that?”

“A change of clothes.” She tried not to grimace. “The ones you were wearing may have to be boiled before you’re able to wear them again.”

Enishi narrowed his eyes. “Whose change of clothes?”

“They were Kenshin’s when he was your age.” Holding up a hand to cut off the indignant and probably spluttering tirade that was sure to follow, she went on. “And it’s no good refusing them, because there’s nothing else for you to wear. And you are not going into that house naked.”

Enishi promptly dunked himself under water.

Tomoe bit back another sigh. “You’ve got to breathe sometime.”

Around the count of thirty, Enishi breached, glaring at her with water streaming down his (clean) face. 

“I’m not wearing Battousai’s murder clothes,” he declared.

She closed her eyes, counted to three, and opened them again.

“Get out of the tub,” she said in the calmest voice she could manage, “dry off, and get dressed.”

He glared at her for a moment, but common sense seemed to prevail and he did climb out of the tub. He dried off, still glaring at her, and even managed to get dressed without breaking his gaze.

“I feel like I should go out and kill at least five - no, _ten_ \- men right now,” he announced, once the final knot in his hakama was tied.

“Bed first.” She spun him around and force-marched him out of the bath shed.

Kenshin and Hiko-san were sitting in front of the hearth, eating rice and grilled fish. A quick look at the stove told her they had made enough for everyone, and she promptly begin filling two bowls of rice.

Enishi seemed to lose some of his defiant anger when shoved into an unfamiliar house with two unfamiliar men, and he hung back next to Tomoe instead of removing his zori to go sit at the hearth.

“Ah, excellent.” Hiko-san turned his head to observe them, rice bowl in hand. “I see him before I smell him. That’s a marked improvement.”

Kenshin muttered something under his breath that Tomoe didn’t catch, but Hiko-san rounded on him at once.

“I’m welcoming the boy into my home and putting him at ease,” he snapped. “Just because you think I’m being abrasive doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

Enishi looked at Tomoe, the question ‘what did we just walk into?’ very clear on his face. 

And at that moment, Tomoe realized two things. First, that this life she had fallen into on Mount Atago was nothing at all like the life she and Enishi had known in Edo. Her father, after all, was a very reserved and dignified man who would have welcomed a guest into his home very differently than Hiko-san, who was abrupt and straightforward in a way that was unlike any other man she had ever known.

And second, that she had gotten so used to this life that she would not have seen anything noteworthy about Hiko-san’s unorthodox welcome. It was simply the way things were up there.

“Thank you, Hiko-san,” she said with a polite inclination of the head. “My brother and I are both very grateful for your hospitality.”

When Enishi said nothing, Tomoe prodded him gently in the back. He bowed stiffly, though with the proper level of depth, and forced a ‘thank you’ out of gritted teeth.

“Hmph.” Hiko-san gave a slight smile. “Very grateful indeed.” 

Tomoe finished putting together the rice, fish, and pickles, quickly arranged the food in two places at the hearth, and guided Enishi to remove his zori and sit next to her. 

He waited until Tomoe took the first bite of rice, but once he lifted the chopsticks to his mouth, he didn’t stop until his own bowl was empty.

“As well as hungry,” Hiko observed. “What have you been surviving on, boy? You look almost as starved as Kenshin was when I took him in all those years ago.”

Enishi shot a resentful glance at Kenshin, who merely sipped tea in return. The pull of food proved too strong though, and Enishi ate several bites of fish before replying. 

“Whatever I could find.” He didn’t look up from tearing into the fish. “Whatever was available.”

Hiko merely gave another “Hmph” in reply and watched Enishi devour his food. 

He devoured a second helping as well, and Tomoe saw the look on his face change almost instantly once he had set down his empty bowl. It was the look she had seen far too often on Kenshin’s face: the look of someone who, after going without proper sleep for too long, suddenly found that the limit of wakefulness had been reached.

“You need rest, Enishi.” She gestured toward Kenshin’s futon, already laid out on the other side of the room. “A proper rest.”

Enishi glanced over at the futon. An argument seemed to brew on his face for a moment, but then he dismissed it with a shrug and let Tomoe lead him over to the futon and even tuck him in.

She reached out and attempted to smooth his hair down, the way she always had when putting him to bed. And just as always, his hair licked back up into a mess of spiky shapes.

“I’m not going to sleep,” he said through a yawn. “Not in this… this… mountain murder hut.”

He was sound asleep a moment later.

Tomoe stayed by his side for a minute longer, gently stroking his hair and taking in the sight of his face. All the anger and strain had vanished in his sleep, leaving behind the simple and purely peaceful face of a child. It was a great comfort to see, and Tomoe found herself smiling as she looked down at him.

She got to her feet slowly a moment later, her swelling belly hampering her somewhat, and returned to the hearth.

“I suppose,” she murmured to Kenshin, her hand finding his, “we should talk about this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> In the manga and OAV, Kenshin addressed the landlady of the Kohagiya as "Okami-san," which literally means "Ms. Landlady." In keeping with the vibe, Kenshin and Tomoe are calling the midwife "Onba-san," which means, you guessed it, "Ms. Midwife."
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Y'all leave the BEST comments. Seriously, I am BASKING in them. Like bright rays of sunshine blasted into my inbox. And usually I wake up to them (which means y'all are either reading very late at night or live on the other side of the world from me), which is a great way to start the day. 
> 
> To be honest, I was initially very hesitant about posting this story, because Ruroken is an old series with a shitbag for an author and because I knew going in that I was writing about a ship that's not terribly popular to begin with. Half the fun of posting my work is interacting with readers, and after coming from a juggernaut fandom like the MCU, I wasn't sure what I was going to get. WELL, IT TURNS OUT I GOT AMAZING READERS WHO HAVE AWESOME THINGS TO SAY. Thank you for that. So much.
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> And with that, I'll leave with my usual note. Talking to you is what makes this fun, so don't be shy. Say hello. You can also poke me on tumblr at frostyemma.


	9. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You had a long way to travel from Edo, boy.” He set down his empty bowl. “And it’s not exactly the sort of journey that you would have been able to make alone, is it?”
> 
> “I have two legs,” Enishi said around a mouthful of porridge, earning him a reproachful gaze from Tomoe. “I’m very fast. I walked.”
> 
> Hiko appraised him for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
> 
> “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think you did. Not by yourself, at least. And certainly not in one go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Edo : the pre-Meiji name of Tokyo  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Tokaido : walking road connecting Edo to Kyoto  
> Terakoya : temple school, taught by samurai or Buddhist priests, required for the children of samurai, especially in major cities  
> Onmitsu : ninja spies and assassins  
> Hanten : padded coat for winter  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack

**Founding year of Genji  
(same evening)**

Kenshin had kept his concerns to himself throughout the entirety of their awkward meal at the soba restaurant and during their interminable walk up the mountain, where Tomoe’s little brother looked like he wanted to bite Kenshin’s hand off for merely holding Tomoe’s hand. (To help her up the damn mountain, but explaining that to an angry child would get him absolutely nowhere, and so he didn’t try.)

Yes, he knew Enishi’s dislike for him was far more complex and warranted than that.

No, he didn’t particularly like that the boy had shown up at all - just when life seemed to be going quite well for them! - but there was nothing to be done for it.

And yes, he felt bad for thinking that way at all.

He felt palpable relief when Tomoe hustled her brother off to the bath shed, though the relief was quickly overwhelmed by a rush of hot guilt. He spent some time digging around in the miscellaneous junk shed to find an old set of clothes for Enishi to wear, which assuaged some of the ugly feelings, but not by much.

“I’ll put the rice on,” he announced to Hiko when he returned to the hut, though first he stepped out of his zori and onto the raised wooden floor for the sole purpose of tucking his sword into the rafters.

It wasn’t bedtime, and he had absolutely no doubt that he could overtake an armed ten-year-old barehanded, and yet… why put any of them into that situation?

“Wise decision,” Hiko said to his back. “That boy looked at you like he wanted your head for a souvenir.”

He sat at the hearth, attending to the dried fish he’d been grilling for dinner. Occasionally, he turned a stick over or shifted it slightly, but mostly he seemed to be watching Kenshin.

“Did she tell you she had a brother?” Hiko asked abruptly. “Because I had no idea until a few moments ago.”

“Yes.” 

Kenshin stepped back into his zori. He set the water to boil at the stove and took a moment to rinse a portion of rice before sitting on the edge of the wooden floor.

“She never talks about him though. Or any of her family, really.”

“I’d noticed.” Hiko’s voice was wry. “But it looks as though, at least in her brother’s case, that’s about to change.” 

He gave the fish a glance, apparently finding them satisfactory, and looked at Kenshin intently. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve given any thought to how the boy managed to make it here all the way from Edo? He can’t have done it on his own, after all.”

“No,” Kenshin agreed. “Someone brought him here, or brought him to Kyoto at least.” 

He leaned forward, resting his arms across his thighs, ostensibly watching for the water to boil, but mostly turning over other concerns in his mind. Finally he decided to simply be out with it.

“He recognized me too.” A frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Without hesitation.”

“Did he?” Hiko looked surprised, but then his brows knit deeply. “I wonder how, seeing as you don’t look a thing like you’re described.”

Kenshin’s frown deepened. “Who got to him then?”

“Someone working for the Bakufu, most likely,” Hiko said. “Someone who stood to gain from finding out where your wife is, and therefore where you are. But I wouldn’t rule out that traitor in your friends’ ranks either.”

He accentuated the word _friends_ as though he meant anything else in the world, but Kenshin chose to ignore that for the time being. He stared hard at the dirt floor beneath his feet, turning questions over in his head.

“Why him though?” he wondered aloud. “Why a child? If whoever sent him is so certain I’m in this area, why not just come themselves?”

“In all likelihood?” Hiko’s frown shifted, becoming one of consideration. “Because they weren’t certain. And because they could count on the boy to want to find his sister.” 

“Seems like a gamble with very little hope of payoff.” 

Abruptly Kenshin pushed off onto his feet. The water wasn’t anywhere close to boiling, but he felt restless. 

“No one followed us up the mountain. No one followed us around the village. And this wasn’t the first time we’ve been in the village and-” He blew out a frustrated breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Then rather than wasting our time with guesswork,” Hiko said, “why not get to the point and simply ask the boy who helped him get here?”

“Yeah.” Kenshin bit back a sigh. “That should be a fun conversation.”

Which they didn’t have that evening, as the boy passed out promptly after eating dinner. Thankfully.

Having given up his futon for Enishi, Kenshin spent a sleepless night against the wall. He might have tried to cram himself into the futon with Tomoe, but that would probably end with Enishi clumsily throwing a tofu bucket at his head. 

He tried - and failed - to not feel resentful.

As soon as the sun was up, he was on his feet and out the door. He washed away the taste of resentment - and the sharper tang of guilt - and then was out of the bath shed in time to catch a makeshift bokutou flung his way.

Apparently his shishou hadn’t slept very well either.

“Are you going to ask the boy how he got here?” Hiko asked almost lazily as his bokutou cracked against Kenshin’s in quick, staccato bursts. 

“I was about to,” Kenshin sprang backwards to avoid another stroke, “but then I got waylaid.”

He managed to get his feet behind him, braced against the trunk of a tree, and propelled himself forward in a horizontal leap, aiming a lightning-fast slash at Hiko’s midsection. 

“Funny how that happened.”

“Trying to pass the responsibility isn’t going to help you.” Hiko leaped neatly over Kenshin’s strike and transitioned smoothly into the Ryutsuisen. “And neither is a linear strike when I have so much room to maneuver.”

“Attacking a man before breakfast isn’t helpful either.” 

Kenshin got his stick up just in time to intercept Hiko’s powerful downward blow, but the force of it still dropped him to his knees and nearly wrenched the stick out of his hand. He flung his upper body forward in a desperation move, lashing out with the butt end of his stick at Hiko’s knee. 

“And yet here we are.”

Hiko seemed to flicker for an instant, leaping backwards so quickly that the air shivered in his wake. Kenshin’s blow hit nothing but air, but his gambit had worked, and he just barely had time to scramble to his feet and regain his vertical base.

“Here I am indeed.” Hiko sounded somewhat perturbed as he swung his bokutou hard at the ground. A shower of dirt and small stones erupted like a geyser from the point of impact, and in the moment that Kenshin’s sight was obscured by the effects of the Doryusen, Hiko burst headfirst through the cloud of dust. 

He spun like some demented corkscrewing missile, his bokutou whipping through the air hard enough to create dust devils, and landed a hard blow on Kenshin’s hastily-raised bokutou that knocked him backwards.

Kenshin rolled to his feet and caught Enishi watching them from the doorway with wide eyes. 

He had the strangest feeling of being caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. He gestured with his chin toward the hut, and Hiko shifted slightly to look.

The moment Enishi realized they were looking back at him, he disappeared into the darkness of the hut.

Kenshin bit back a sigh.

“Is that all, then?” Hiko tapped his makeshift bokutou against his shoulder once before shrugging and tossing it carelessly aside. “In that case, I suppose you’d better go inside and talk to the boy.”

Breakfast wasn’t at all awkward, the four of them sitting around the hearth and eating Tomoe’s excellent Edo-style rice porridge in grim silence.

Hiko kept throwing Kenshin significant looks, which Kenshin pointedly ignored. If his mouth was full of porridge, he couldn’t speak anyway, could he?

Finally, after the looks could grow no more significant without setting fire to the house, Hiko simply shook his head in apparent disgust and turned to speak to Enishi himself.

“You had a long way to travel from Edo, boy.” He set down his empty bowl. “And it’s not exactly the sort of journey that you would have been able to make alone, is it?”

“I have two legs,” Enishi said around a mouthful of porridge, earning him a reproachful gaze from Tomoe. “I’m very fast. I walked.”

Hiko appraised him for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think you did. Not by yourself, at least. And certainly not in one go.”

Enishi responded by spooning an enormous heaping of porridge into his mouth, enough so that both of his cheeks puffed out. Hiko watched with what appeared to be disinterest.

“When you’re done with that,” Hiko said dryly, “you can answer my question.”

Enishi swallowed the porridge with what looked like some effort and then glared at Hiko. “And if you don’t like my answer, are you going to take me outside and hit me with a stick?”

“Absolutely not,” Tomoe said, though she did not look entirely convinced. 

Hiko merely chuckled.

“Why would I have to?” He shook his head. “All I would have to do is remind you that you’re here - well-fed, well-rested, and well-scrubbed instead of starving, sleepless, and filthy - because I allowed it.” He gave Enishi a level look. “You’ll answer me, boy. Your upbringing gives you no choice.”

Kenshin wondered what that said about his own upbringing, but he kept that thought to himself and poked at his porridge instead.

Enishi scowled and shoved another spoonful of porridge into his mouth. “I hitched a ride. It’s not as if the Tokaido is some secret mystery road.”

“Of course not.” Hiko hardly blinked. “But it’s also hardly the sort of road a boy travels alone. Even during the most peaceful of times, that road was never free of thieves and bandits. And now, with a war on, I’d imagine it’s only become less so.”

He spoke slowly and deliberately. “So who gave you this ride? Who could protect you from the dangers on the way?”

“No one protected me.” Enishi stared into his porridge bowl. “I just wanted to find my sister.”

“Your intentions would hardly have been important to anyone who wanted to waylay a young boy.” Hiko waved off Enishi’s explanation dismissively. “You know that as well as I do. And it’s impossible that no one at all protected you on the Tokaido, because you never would have made it here otherwise.”

“I just wanted to find my sister!” Enishi shouted suddenly, and would have slammed his porridge bowl down if not for Tomoe’s steadying hand on his arm. 

Kenshin shot a look at Hiko. Hiko did not acknowledge it.

“And you have.” Hiko’s face was stony. “Congratulations. But you still haven’t answered my question, and I’m beginning to find it tiresome to continue asking it.”

“She just left!” Enishi turned angry, wet eyes on Tomoe. “She just left, and all our father would tell me is that she was in Kyoto, but that’s it. I wasn’t allowed to know anything else, and maybe he didn’t know anything else either, because he never knows or does anything, so I started asking around for her, but- but-”

He gritted his teeth and wiped a sleeve furiously across his eyes. 

“But nobody knew anything, and some of the neighbors said-” He hiccuped and seemed annoyed at himself for doing so. “Some of the neighbors said that Neechan- that she- that she thought she was too good for anyone else, that she thought she was above her station, and nobody - nobody knew anything, nobody would tell me anything!”

Tomoe looked as though she was about to cry. She reached out for Enishi with both arms, but the boy recoiled and Tomoe drew back as if stung.

Kenshin didn’t know what else to do but let the whole thing play out.

Enishi took a shaky breath, but if he hoped to steady himself, it didn’t help. The tears streamed freely down his face now.

“And then- then on the way home from terakoya, they- they found me, and they said…” He took another breath, shakier this time. “They said they could help me find Neechan. That- that-” His face twisted into a grimace suddenly and he glared at Kenshin. “That _Battousai_ had taken her, but if I helped them, I could get her back, and he would die for what he had done, and we could go home.”

Hiko looked at Kenshin as well, then over at a stricken Tomoe, and then back to Kenshin with a look of dawning comprehension on his face.

“The Yaminobu,” he said as though confirming what he had already known.

Enishi looked as if he had been struck in the face. 

So it was true then.

“I didn’t say that,” Enishi said hastily. “I never said that.”

Kenshin glared into his bowl. The Yaminobu had gone so far as to use a ten-year-old child to get to him. 

“I know you never said that.” Hiko jerked his chin at Tomoe. “She did.”

Tomoe had gone quite pale. “I should have known,” she whispered. “I should have never gone to them, but I never dreamed they would try to use him.”

“I never said that!” Enishi threw his bowl down and clambered to his feet. “I didn’t say anything about them, I didn’t say anything!”

“Sit down, boy.” Hiko’s voice was a whipcrack. “They won’t find you here. And even if they do, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

“Enishi, please.” Tomoe reached out again for her brother, her eyes flickering between Hiko, Kenshin, and Enishi as though she could not tell where to look next.

Enishi didn’t sit down. His eyes flickered to the door and back to Tomoe and he took a halting step backward.

Kenshin set his bowl aside. “What did they do to you?”

“What?” Enishi fixed his gaze on him, expression instantly twisting into angry suspicion. 

“They’re not here.” Kenshin worked to keep his tone even. Unaccusing. “They didn’t follow us up the mountain, they’re not in the forest.”

Enishi’s eyes widened.

“So what did they do to you?” Kenshin kept his hands on his knees. “For you to end up here, alone, and yet so terrified of them?”

Enishi took a shaking breath. He glanced at Tomoe again, then back at Kenshin. “What’s it to you,” he spit the last word out as if he couldn’t stand the taste, “ _Battousai_?”

Carefully, and with much patience, Kenshin remained calm. 

“Quite a bit,” he said truthfully. “I have a vested interest in putting an end to the way the Bakufu allows children to be harmed.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed on Kenshin for an almost imperceptible second, but then shifted to Enishi once more.

“Enishi?” Tomoe’s eyes shone with unshed tears and her voice shook. “Did they hurt you?”

For a second, Enishi froze in place, eyes wide and horrified. Then his lower lip trembled and a fresh rush of tears ran down his face. 

“If they know…” he whispered, fingers digging into the fabric of his kimono. “If they know I told you anything, they’ll-”

“They can’t do anything else to you,” Kenshin murmured. “Not when you’re here.”

Enishi shook his head. “They got- he got…” His whole body was trembling now. “He got so mad at me…”

A sudden sob escaped Tomoe’s throat. She got awkwardly to her feet and enfolded Enishi in a shivering embrace, stroking the back of his tousled head.

“I’m so sorry, Enishi.” Tears made wet tracks down her pale cheeks. “I never should have tried to deal with them… this is all my fault…”

“Whose fault it is isn’t what’s important right now,” Hiko’s voice intruded, firm and authoritative. “What is important is whether they know where any of you are.”

He looked at Enishi, who was still trembling in Tomoe’s arms. “Look at me, boy.”

Enishi lifted his head slightly, though Tomoe seemed loath to let go of him. 

“You need to tell us how you parted ways with them.” Hiko leaned slightly forward. “And what they knew.”

“He got so mad at me,” Enishi repeated, tears dripping onto Tomoe’s sleeves. She didn’t seem to notice. “When Neechan didn’t… when she didn’t go to Otsu.”

Kenshin narrowed his eyes. “Who told you she was going to go to Otsu?”

Enishi looked up at Tomoe. “Well, weren’t you?”

Tomoe looked absolutely terrified.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered, turning a wide-eyed and horror struck gaze on Kenshin. “I didn’t know they knew… I never told them anything after I got to Kyoto, I swear it!”

Kenshin fought to remain calm, but he realized he was gripping his hakama very tightly. He blew out a steadying breath. “We never figured out who the traitor was.” 

His tone must have sounded very dark not just to his own ears, as Enishi’s eyes widened slightly at that.

“It wasn’t me,” he whispered. “They took me to Otsu, and you and Neechan never arrived.” He detached himself from Tomoe, wiped his sleeve across his nose, and resettled onto the floor.

Tomoe sat down next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

Enishi spoke to the floor. “They searched Otsu. They went to the house you were supposed to be staying at and… they burned it down. And then they spread out and searched the villages near Otsu, and they still didn’t find you, and then…”

He clenched his hakama, hands shaking.

“Tatsumi-sama got very angry,” he whispered. “And he… he…”

He didn’t seem to be able to get the words out. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, Hiko spoke.

“He beat you.” Hiko was unmistakably angry. “Beat you and left you for dead.”

Enishi nodded. He didn’t look up from the floor. Tomoe’s arm tightened convulsively and protectively around him.

Kenshin was silent until he was sure he could speak without clenching his teeth. “And how did you find us here?”

“I just…” Again Enishi dragged his sleeve across his nose. “I just walked around. I walked around looking for Neechan. I think I walked around for weeks and weeks.” 

Tomoe looked stricken at that.

A hesitant little smile tugged at one corner of Enishi’s mouth and he shot a sly glance at his sister. “I stole food sometimes, too.”

“Oh, Enishi.” Tomoe cradled him against her side. “If you hadn’t found me in the village-”

“But he did,” cut in Hiko. “Which means that if they’re still looking, they may be able to find you as well.”

Kenshin was starting to think that perhaps he wouldn’t mind if this so-called Tatsumi-sama and the rest of the Yaminobu found their way there. They had already caused enough trouble, and if they wanted to meet him so badly…?

Best to put an end to it.

Tomoe was looking at him, and she must not have liked the expression on his face, because her eyes were wide.

He shook his head and abruptly pushed onto his feet. He stepped into his zori and went to the door, sliding it open and taking in a deep lungful of crisp morning air.

“Kenshin?” Tomoe’s voice sounded as worried as her face had looked just a moment ago. He heard her shift, rising on her knees, and he could tell that she was debating whether or not to stand up and come to his side.

Kenshin sighed. “I doubt they’ll find you here.” 

He turned and looked at Enishi, who had tugged his sister back down next to him. Enishi looked back at him, his expression a mixture of fear and anger. 

Fair enough.

“You say you’ve been wandering around for weeks?” Kenshin continued. “If they were following you, they would have followed us up here already.” 

Unless they were planning something, but if so, they had already lost the element of surprise and would be on Kenshin’s home ground besides. If they had wanted to attack, they would have done so in the dead of the night.

He kept that to himself.

Enishi scrunched his face up, then burst out with, “So they just… just left me for dead? For _nothing_?”

“And these are the Shogun’s highest-ranked onmitsu?” Hiko scowled. “I’m beginning to think that perhaps the Bakufu ought to lose this war on principle alone.”

Kenshin looked at him for a moment, then turned back to studying the landscape outside. “If we’re lucky, it will snow soon, erasing all trace of you.” He let his hand rest on the doorframe. “If we’re very lucky, they'll think we died in the Kyoto fire after failing to turn up in Otsu.”

“In which case, you should praise your unprecedented luck, boy.” Hiko picked up the teapot and refilled each of their cups. “You fell in with the Shogun’s personal onmitsu, you were taken from your home to travel across the country, you were beaten and left for dead, and you wandered around for weeks in winter without food or shelter.”

He paused. “You ought to have died several times over, but instead you’ve come to a place of safety. With your own family, as it turns out.”

“It’s true,” Tomoe murmured. “You are safe here. And I think it’s very lucky that you found me when you did. I’d never have forgiven myself if you’d frozen or starved to death down there when I was only a few hours distant.”

“So…” Enishi’s voice sounded small. “What happens now?”

“Now?” Hiko sighed exaggeratedly. “Now I start wondering how cramped this house is going to feel when springtime comes.”

…

They awoke to a world blanketed in snow.

Kenshin could feel the cold seeping through the wall before he even fully woke up. (Which reminded him that he had gotten too used to sleeping in a futon again, and so he’d give Enishi a few days to settle before figuring out a new sleeping arrangement that benefited everyone. Sleeping against a wall was no longer a viable option.)

Carefully he eased past everyone else, still slumbering peacefully in their warm futon, crossed the floor and knelt down in front of the tansu chest. He slid the bottom drawer open and was pleased to find two carefully folded hanten coats, right where they had always been. 

He shook his out - faded blue, but still perfectly serviceable and _warm_ \- and shrugged into it. He unfolded Hiko’s, and a yellowed bit of rice paper fluttered to the floor.

_Sake in summer.  
Winter, spring, and autumn too.  
Shishou drinks too much._

The rice paper was brittle in Kenshin’s hand. He remembered - and he must have been only ten years of age - painstakingly writing out the characters in the most precise brushstrokes he could manage. He had done so in the middle of the night, with only the moonlight to illuminate his work, so that the presentation of the haiku - his masterwork, he had called it - would be a surprise.

He had even made a paper fan for the presentation, in his best imitation of a rakugo storyteller. Hiko had been amused enough that he had pasted the haiku onto the wall, and it had stayed there for years.

Kenshin had almost forgotten about it.

He returned the paper to the bottom drawer, laid out his shishou’s hanten on top of the tansu chest, and then slipped into his zori and stepped outside. There might be older hanten in the shed, and Tomoe and Enishi would need them.

A little bit of digging revealed a smaller one, from when he had been a boy, and a much bigger, well-worn, and repeatedly patched one that Hiko must have worn until he was able to have his current one made.

When he returned to the hut, Tomoe had started on reheating the porridge pot and someone had folded up all the futon. Hiko and Enishi sat by the hearth, Hiko stoking the fire and Enishi warming his hands over the embers.

“That snow’s not going to stop until tonight,” Hiko observed as he placed a split log on the fire. Kenshin saw that he had put the hanten on. “Possibly even tomorrow morning.” He turned his head slightly toward Enishi. “You’re lucky you made it here when you did, boy. No one would have found you until the thaw otherwise.”

“Don’t say that.” Tomoe’s voice was sharp. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

Enishi scowled. “I wouldn’t have just let myself freeze and die, Neechan.”

Tomoe shook her head and continued to stir the porridge. “You’re here. We’re all here, and the house is warm and dry, and we’ve firewood and food enough to last all winter.”

“And hanten.” Kenshin stepped out of his zori and seated himself at the hearth. “The ones I found in the shed are a bit worn, but the padding is still good and they’ll last through the winter.”

“The boy’s will, at least.” Hiko turned to observe the hanten that Tomoe and Enishi were putting on. Kenshin’s old hanten fit perfectly on Enishi, but Tomoe was swimming in Hiko’s. “The other one… well, I’d kept on meaning to have it properly repaired, but my own patchwork will have to do for the time being.”

“It’s perfectly fine.” Tomoe spooned porridge into bowls for each of them and joined them at the hearth. “It’s warm and comfortable.”

Enishi snorted. “You look like a bandit, Neechan.” He reached out and fingered some of the patchwork on the sleeves. “Or a pirate. Or a pirate bandit.”

“Pirates are bandits.” Tomoe swatted him lightly and turned a critical eye on him. “Bandits that sail. And you look like a skinny little scarecrow.”

Enishi puffed up indignantly. “I’m not little!”

Kenshin idly wondered if this was what having a child would be like. 

The thought was entirely too overwhelming. He busied himself by hastily pouring and serving four cups of tea. 

“If you turned sideways, you’d slip between the floorboards.” Hiko picked up his tea and sipped it, frowning. “We’re going to have to start building you up, boy.”

Enishi glowered at him. “I’ll grow.”

“Not if you don’t eat your porridge,” Tomoe prompted, sliding the bowl closer to him.

“Yeah, well, I guess Battousai never ate his porridge.” Enishi picked up the bowl and spooned a heap into his mouth. “All the stories say he’s supposed to be at least eight shaku tall, but he barely clears five.”

“I’m exactly five.” Kenshin blew the steam from his tea and took a sip. “Thank you.”

“The stories also say that he can breathe fire and has tanto knives for teeth.” Hiko snorted and stirred his bowl. “Which goes to show how little of what you hear should be believed.”

“Tanto for teeth?” Kenshin raised an eyebrow. “I must have missed that one.”

“Oh yes.” Hiko actually sounded mirthful. “It was very creative. I wish they’d had a drawing.”

“You can call him Himura-san, you know, Enishi.” Tomoe puffed gently at her own porridge before spooning some into her mouth. “When you call him Battousai, it sounds like you’re trying to be insulting.”

Enishi glowered into his bowl. “It’s his name, isn’t it?”

“Nickname.” Kenshin took a moment to savor his first bite of porridge. As always, anything Tomoe made was very good. 

“Yeah, well.” Enishi jabbed his spoon into his porridge. “You chose it.”

“No.” Kenshin sighed around another mouthful. “But it stuck.”

“It’s apt, at least.” Hiko shrugged and took a large bite. “You did always have an affinity for battoujutsu.”

“He has an affinity for gardening as well.” Tomoe’s face was perfectly neutral. “His nickname should reflect that.”

“You _garden_?” Enishi spluttered through a mouthful of porridge.

Kenshin pretended not to notice the boy furiously wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his borrowed hanten. “I do.”

“Oh yes.” Hiko seemed to adopt Tomoe’s absolute expressionlessness. “His daikon radishes are the stuff of legends.”

Kenshin glanced at Hiko, raised an eyebrow, then gestured toward the earthen pickle jars tucked in the corner of the kitchen space. 

“Everything in those jars is from the garden.” He swallowed another spoonful of porridge. “You’ll be eating from them all winter.”

Several expressions flickered across Enishi’s face - anger, annoyance, disbelief - before finally settling on astonished bewilderment. 

“That’s so… so…” He shook his head and spat the word out. “ _Boring._ ”

“But useful.” Hiko finished his porridge and set down the bowl. “Especially when the snow is hip-deep and we still have food for months.”

Furiously Enishi shoveled an enormous spoonful of porridge into his mouth. “Still boring,” he mumbled around the food, and might have said more had Tomoe not lightly whacked him on the head.

In the moment of silence that followed, Kenshin carefully scraped the bowl clean of every last bit of porridge, then set the bowl down and looked appreciatively at his wife.

“Everything you make is always so good.”

“It’s only porridge.” A shy sort of smile flickered at the corners of Tomoe’s eyes and mouth. “I thought you liked my ochazuke much better.”

“Ochazuke is good for summer, especially the way you make it.” Kenshin lifted the teacup to his lips. “But your porridge is so warm and filling.”

Tomoe’s shy smile lingered. “It’s not difficult to make something warm and filling.”

“Take the compliments you’re given.” Hiko seemed mildly annoyed and simultaneously amused. “Why should you argue about it when Kenshin and I both agree that we never used to eat this well before you came?”

“It’s true,” Kenshin agreed. “Neither of us ever learned how to season food.”

Hiko bristled at that, but his face went through a series of expressions ending in what appeared to be resignation.

Tomoe busied herself by pointlessly stirring the remaining bit of porridge in her bowl, but her smile still tugged at the corners of her mouth and Kenshin just barely resisted reaching out and running a finger down her cheek.

Abruptly Enishi stood up, stepped into his zori, and crossed the kitchen to slide the door open. He stared out at the snow, now coming down very steadily, and then turned and looked at his sister.

“Neechan?” His expression was unreadable. “What are we going to do?”

Tomoe looked uncertainly over at Kenshin, then stood up carefully and smoothed down the front of her hanten. Her belly swelled noticeably, despite the additional layer. She stepped into her own zori and moved to Enishi’s side.

“About what?” She put a hand on her brother’s arm.

“We can’t just stay here.” He looked up at her. “Not forever. Until the snow stops falling, maybe, but not forever.”

“Until the fighting stops.” She looked out at the snow, her hand moving up to Enishi’s shoulder. “It isn’t safe to travel now. Hiko-san’s right, I don’t know how you managed to make it here from Edo, but I won’t trust to blind luck again.”

Her other hand strayed to her belly. “Especially now.”

Enishi frowned. “Especially now that what?”

Kenshin glanced at Hiko, but said nothing. 

He was fairly certain that if he offered any opinion on the matter, Enishi would merely retort with some variation of ‘I didn’t ask you, _Battousai!_ ’ and so best to let the siblings work it out themselves.

Tomoe’s cheeks flushed, and she looked down at her swollen midsection. “Especially now that there are going to be five of us in this house once the spring comes.”

“Why?” Enishi looked over at Kenshin and Hiko, then back up at his sister. “Who else is coming here? Not Otousan? He’d never be allowed to leave Edo.”

Hiko rolled his eyes.

“No, Enishi.” Tomoe’s voice was patient, but tinged with embarrassment. “Not Otousan.” She took a deep breath. “There will be a baby. In spring.”

“Ew,” Enishi said immediately, followed by, “Why?”

Kenshin nearly snorted into his tea, but managed to gulp it down fast enough. Tomoe glanced at him helplessly.

“Well,” said Hiko suddenly, a sort of devilish amusement lighting his eyes, “you see, boy, when a man and a woman -”

“Don’t you dare,” Tomoe snapped, right as Kenshin set his cup down on the floor with a firm, “Shishou. No.”

Hiko gave a loud snort of laughter and sipped his own tea, but mercifully said nothing else.

Comprehension dawned suddenly on Enishi’s face and he looked at his sister with wide eyes. “You’re… you’re having a baby?”

Tomoe nodded, her cheeks still flushed and her eyes fixed on Kenshin.

“I thought you just got _fat!_ ” Enishi practically shouted, eyes and mouth agog.

The flush left Tomoe’s cheeks abruptly. She snapped her head around to glare at Enishi, her eyes narrowing.

Enishi shrugged. “Well, I did.”

Hiko’s snorts had transitioned into full-throated belly laughs. Kenshin, on the other hand, had suddenly found the inside of his teacup, as well as the rafters in the roof, to be very interesting.

“Wait.” Enishi’s expression darkened just as suddenly. “You’re having a baby-”

Kenshin braced himself. Here it came.

“With him!” Enishi pointed to Kenshin. “With Battousai!”

“He’s my husband, Enishi.” Exhaustion vied with placation in Tomoe’s voice. “Who else would I have a child with?”

“Why?” Enishi demanded. “Why would you want a baby with Battousai at all?”

“Stop calling him that.” Tomoe’s hand tightened on Enishi’s shoulder. “He has a name. You’re being rude.”

“Sorry.” Enishi wrenched out of Tomoe’s grasp and sketched a mock bow in Kenshin’s direction. “Battousai- _san._ ”

“Enishi.” Tomoe’s voice had suddenly grown sharp. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

That pulled Enishi up short. He looked at his sister, found no quarter in her expression, and then looked at Kenshin, who did his level best to keep his expression carefully neutral.

“I’m sorry,” Enishi said through gritted teeth. “ _Himura-san._ ”

Kenshin sipped at his tea.

It was going to be a long damn winter.

…  
...

Hiko shook his head at the young boy’s unwarranted intensity and turned his attention to his own half-empty teacup. His apprentice had never presented such outright anger. He’d been snide, of course, and he’d never missed an opportunity to take jabs at his shishou. Especially when the result stroked Kenshin’s wry sense of humor.

A memory flashed through his mind - one that brought an odd mix of pleasurable nostalgia and pain.

When Kenshin had been about ten years old, he had presented Hiko one morning with a painstakingly-calligraphed haiku. He had clearly woken up long before the sun rose in order to write it, and he had been very pleased with the result.

Kenshin had presented it with the waving arm motions and exaggerated sounds of a rakugo storyteller, and Hiko had rolled his eyes until they were ready to fall out of their sockets. But he’d hung the paper on the wall of the house, and it had always been good for at least a momentary chuckle. 

Until Kenshin had left, of course, and then Hiko had torn it down in a spasm of anger that had not extended far enough for him to crumple it up and throw it in the fire. Instead, he’d rolled it carefully and put it away in a drawer.

It still lay there, though he hadn’t looked at it since. Though Kenshin had, apparently, when he’d dug out the winter hanten from the chest. 

He wondered for a moment - and it struck him as odd even as the thought crossed his mind - whether he might dig it out and hang it on the wall again. After all, he thought with a smirk, it would certainly amuse Tomoe. And it might even provoke a real laugh from her brother.

However, as amusing as it might have been to continue watching the siblings snipe at one another over his apprentice - and it was most certainly amusing - there were better things for them all to be doing on a winter’s day. And Hiko wasn’t going to spend the day indoors just watching the snow fall.

“Well then.” He got to his feet and headed to the edge of the wooden floor, where his boots and cloak waited for him. “ _Himura-san_ needs his exercise.”

“It’s still snowing.” Tomoe looked outside uncertainly.

“Yes.” Hiko pulled on his boots and reached for his cloak. “And part of kenjutsu is being prepared to fight in any weather, at any time.”

Kenshin had already stepped into his zori without a word. Either he didn’t want to sit and watch the snow fall all day or, more likely, he didn’t care to be around his new brother-in-law for several uncomfortable hours.

The latter, most definitely.

“So.” Hiko dashed forward, his bokutou carving a great slash in the fallen snow that sent up a powdery white sheet to obscure Kenshin’s sight. “The boy seems less than pleased with this new development.”

He plunged through the curtain of snow, his bokutou stabbing straight outward, but Kenshin managed to parry the blow a split second before it made contact.

“Oh, is that what you thought?” Kenshin pivoted smoothly into the Ryukansen, his spinning backhanded blow timed perfectly for a counterstrike to Hiko’s missed stab. “I wasn’t terribly certain.”

Hiko bent forward sharply at the waist, Kenshin’s slash passing a paper’s width above his back - close enough to ruffle his cloak - and then thrust a hard shoulder into Kenshin’s side. He bulled his apprentice aside with sheer strength and weight, creating space for another slash.

“He’s a very angry child.” Hiko’s bokutou cracked repeatedly against Kenshin’s as they traded lightning-fast blows. “Angry at his father, at his sister, at you… probably at life itself.”

“Yes,” Kenshin agreed, parrying one blow and then leaping high into the air to avoid the next one. “I’m definitely looking forward to dealing with that all winter, and then dealing with that some more once the baby comes.”

He plummeted into the Ryutsuisen, and Hiko readied himself to counter with the Ryushousen, but Kenshin shifted at the last second - it had been a feint, and instead of slashing downward, he brought his bokutou to his hip in an approximation of battoujutsu position. Hiko was forced to leap backwards instead of upwards to avoid the sudden lightning-fast strike, and Kenshin immediately pressed his advantage.

He was getting better, Hiko thought appreciatively. Which meant, of course, that the challenge level needed to be increased appropriately.

“The baby will be more than enough to deal with, I’d imagine.” Hiko stepped in close to Kenshin, locking bokutou with him, and used his size and weight to his advantage again. “Though at least it’ll be spring by then, and we’ll all be able to get out of the house if we like.”

Kenshin staggered backward under the relentless wall of muscle that pressed him to the defensive again. “Well, maybe we can get my wife’s brother out of the house and all the way to Edo at that point.”

“There’s little chance of that.” Hiko gave a hard shove, and Kenshin struggled to keep his feet underneath him as he gave way. The snow worked against him as well, and Hiko drove straight forward with a horizontal slash. “It’s not going to be the weather that keeps the boy here. He won’t be safe on the roads - none of you will - and besides, he won’t leave his sister now that he’s found her.”

A growl of frustration was Kenshin’s only reply.

“Did you expect him to?” Hiko pushed forward, using his strength to force his way through the snow. “He walked around from village to village in this cold, beaten and starving and half alive, just so he could find her.”

“Stop that.”

Hiko snorted and continued to press the attack. “Stop what?”

“Trying to make me feel sorry for him.” Kenshin leapt agilely sideways, staying clear of the snow and landing lightly enough not to sink too deeply into it. “I’m cold and annoyed and not in the mood.”

Hiko swung his bokutou across in a short, vicious arc directed at Kenshin’s legs. Kenshin was forced to jump high again to avoid it, and Hiko caught him with the Ryushousen as he did so, sending him tumbling into the snow. 

“I never wanted you to feel _sorry_ for anyone.” Hiko swung his bokutou over his shoulder and waited for Kenshin to recover from the rising blow. “I just want you to know what you’re up against.”

“I’m up against a lot more than an angry kid.” 

Kenshin was back on his feet, but he took a moment to shake the snow out of his hanten. The fight seemed to drain out of him suddenly, and he leaned back against a tree and stared hard at the hut.

“He knew we were supposed to go to Otsu.”

Hiko lowered his bokutou to the ground and leaned on it. “Because the Yaminobu knew.” His eyes narrowed. “Which means that whoever wanted you to go to Otsu was sending you into a death trap.”

“It was not-” Kenshin bit down on a name, to Hiko’s intense frustration. 

“Who?” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “Are you still protecting the weaklings who hired you to do their fighting for them? These empty-handed revolutionaries who would have had you killed to save their own skins when the fight turned against them?”

Kenshin glanced at him. “There _is_ a traitor in the Ishin Shishi, but it’s not the man who hired me. The Shinsengumi wouldn’t have been so intent on finding him otherwise.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” Hiko’s glare soured. It was just like his idiot apprentice to be so trusting. He would always be stubbornly willing to believe the best of people, no matter the evidence to the contrary. “Quite sure?”

“Shishou.” Kenshin exhaled heavily, breath turning to steam in the frigid air. “I know you hate that I went to Kyoto at all, but this has nothing to do with loyalty. I owe no loyalty to whoever would have let my wife burn to death in Otsu.”

He pushed off the tree, eyes fixed on the hut as if that would reveal answers. “It makes no sense, on any level, for the man who hired me to be the traitor. It could have been someone close to him though.”

At least this was progress of a sort. 

And yet, the fact that Kenshin still felt the desire to remain loyal to any of these men - including the one who had hired him to perform the killings that he himself could not or would not do - meant that there was quite a bit of progress yet to be made.

“And the boy wouldn’t know who it was.” Hiko blew out a sigh. “Which means that there’s precious little chance of us ever finding out.” He looked critically over at Kenshin. “Unless they somehow manage to stumble across you one day in the village out of pure dumb luck, like the boy did.”

Kenshin’s expression hardened.

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility.” Hiko raised an eyebrow. “And I think you might even enjoy meeting these Yaminobu face to face, if they did manage to find you. Or was I perhaps misreading the look on your face when the boy was describing what they did to him?”

Kenshin didn’t answer right away, though he worked his jaw as if considering the matter very carefully.

Finally he said, “It would be best if they never found us up here.”

“Agreed,” Hiko replied easily. “And, in all likelihood, they won’t.” He snorted. “The boy must have had the gods’ own luck on his side. An ant dropped in the middle of Edo would stand about as much chance of making it to Mongolia.”

“Company.” Kenshin gestured toward the doorway of the hut. Hiko turned to see Enishi standing there, half hidden behind the frame but peering intently out at them.

Enishi scowled when he realized they were both looking at him, but he stepped outside and slid the door closed behind him. “She’s making baby clothes.”

“She’s been doing that for weeks,” Kenshin said mildly.

The boy looked as if he were on the verge of shouting something like ‘Nobody asked you, _Battousai!_ ’ but abruptly he changed course and said, “That’s so… boring.”

Hiko looked down at the boy. “It’s necessary, is what it is.” He jerked his head towards the sundries shed. “You were lucky enough to be able to fit into the things I had in there, but I don’t have anything that would suit an infant.”

He indicated Kenshin with another jerk of his head. “I didn’t raise him from an infant, after all. I didn’t find him until his seventh year.”

Enishi looked at Kenshin, narrowed his eyes, and instead of asking if Hiko had found his apprentice in the mouth of hell or something equally nonsensical, said, “Babies are boring. I don’t know why anyone would want one.”

Kenshin shrugged. “It’s not really for us to decide. They come along whether we’re ready or not.”

Hiko repressed the urge to remind his apprentice that no, babies did not simply ‘come along’, but decided that facing the ire of his wife wasn’t worth it. 

“Did Tomoe kick you out of the house?” Kenshin asked. “This is usually her uninterrupted sewing time.”

“How would you know?” Enishi snapped.

Kenshin raised an eyebrow.

“No!” Enishi nearly shouted, immediately followed by, “Well, yes. Kind of.”

Hiko rolled his eyes. “By rights, I ought to kick you right back into the house.” He grumbled. “It’s my house, after all.”

Enishi glowered at him. “She said-” He _tsk_ ed in disgust and turned his moody expression on Kenshin. “She said it was her uninterrupted sewing time.”

“And you interrupted her,” Kenshin pointed out mildly.

“No.” Enishi folded his arms and stared defiantly at both of them. “I mean, maybe. Maybe a bit, but it’s not my fault babies are boring.”

“The baby hasn’t even been born yet.” Hiko returned the boy’s glower, though he didn’t go so far as to fold his arms. That would have been the physical equivalent of a pout. “You’re griping about the very idea of a baby, do you realize that?”

“Well, the very idea of a baby is very boring,” Enishi returned. “I definitely realize that.”

“I understand they’re not very interesting to start,” Kenshin mused, “but become more interesting as time goes on.” He gestured vaguely toward the boy with his bokutou. “I doubt your teachers at terakoya ever called you _boring._ ”

Enishi opened and closed his mouth several times at that, clearly flummoxed.

Hiko sighed deeply. 

This was going to be a very long winter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> I've been getting some comments here n' there about Kaoru or Kenshin/Kaoru, so I guess certain things in fandom never change. Just like my feelings about Kaoru and Kenshin/Kaoru haven't changed either.
> 
> In this house, we love and respect both Tomoe and Kaoru. Canonically, Kaoru respected Tomoe's sacrifice and love for Kenshin, and she credited Tomoe for protecting her. Tomoe wanted Kenshin to buck up and go rescue the girl who "wants to see your smile more than anything," so she was clearly rooting for those two nerds to get it together. (And they do! Yay!)
> 
> I love Kenshin/Kaoru too, but I don't feel the need to write about them (at this moment) because I find their story so satisfying. They get a real happy ending! With marriage! And a kid! There's nothing vague about their ending at all, and in fact, I got everything I would've wanted for them! But I also tend to write fic when there's something about a story that feels left unsaid (see: my numerous Stucky fics), and in Kenshin and Kaoru's case, anything I might've said has already been said in canon.
> 
> Still with me? Good! Because I have a lot to say about Kenshin, Tomoe, Hiko, and Enishi. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Anyway, talking to me causes me to write 3 paragraph explanations of a 20+ year old series. If you like that sort of thing (and I hope you do), keep talking to me. Your commentary is so motivating, encouraging, and often delightful. Don't be shy, come say hi! You can also poke me on tumblr at frostyemma.


	10. Growth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kenshin turned to where Enishi was pointing, eyes flickering over the village notice board. One fluttering bit of paper caught his attention.
> 
> **‘CHOSHU TRAITORS PUT TO DEATH!’**
> 
> His stomach clenched, and he fought down the sudden rush of bile hot in his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Terakoya : temple school, taught by samurai or Buddhist priests, required for the children of samurai, especially in the major cities  
> Fukagutsu boots : woven straw snow boots  
> Hanten : padded coat for winter  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Onmitsu : ninja spies and assassins  
> Andon lantern : paper-sided oil lantern  
> Haori : long jacket worn over kimono by both men and women  
> Satsuma and Choshu : the domains that formed the Ishin Shishi alliance

**Founding year of Genji  
(winter 1865)**

Tomoe set down the finished baby blanket beside her, neatly folded, and flexed her stiffened fingers. The pile of baby clothes and necessities - blankets, diapers, bibs - had grown over the past month along with her belly.

And her skill, she thought with a hint of pride as she looked at the neat stitching. Her baby deserved quality, after all, and she had worked hard to be able to provide it.

Picking up a tiny kimono, she held it up and tried to picture it on her baby. Her baby, whose face she couldn’t quite picture but which would be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen or ever would see in the world. Her baby, and Kenshin’s as well…

She looked down to see Kenshin, his head in her lap, his eyes closed, a peaceful look on his face. He wasn’t asleep - she could tell, after so long watching him sleep - but he had been pleasantly dozing at least.

“Sometimes,” he murmured without opening his eyes, “he kicks me. Right in the ear. Think that means anything?”

She smiled down at him and threaded her fingers through his hair. They always spoke of the baby as ‘he’, of course, and she sometimes secretly wondered whether he would have his father’s unusual hair color.

“Probably that he wants you to move your ear.”

“I would, but…” He cracked an eye open and gazed up at her. “Your lap is so comfortable.”

“Even with the kicking?” 

She rested a hand on the swollen bulge of her stomach, feeling the erratic movements inside. The baby had become surprisingly active over the past two weeks, as though he had suddenly awoken from a long sleep and was making up for his previous inactivity.

Kenshin hummed in response. 

“I think you should talk to him.” She closed her eyes and smiled a small but contented smile, picturing her husband pressing his lips to her stomach and speaking through her flesh to their baby. “So he’ll know you by your voice when he meets you.”

A tiny smile drifted across Kenshin’s lips. “What would I say?”

“I would say that you two are disgusting!” Enishi looked up from where he was grudgingly working on his kanji, brush in hand. “You’re both so gross.”

Tomoe turned to glare at her brother through narrowed eyes. 

She found herself wondering whether her father had ever done such things. Whether he had lain with his head against her mother’s stomach while Enishi squirmed inside. Whether he had ever spoken to his unborn son, so that the two of them could know one another when they met.

She couldn’t remember. She had only been seven years old, after all, and she wouldn’t have been looking for such things. And besides, for as much as her father had loved and doted on her mother, he had always been a very reserved man. It was hard to imagine him abandoning his quiet dignity, even for such a tender moment.

Her glare softened.

“Enishi?” She looked down at Kenshin for a moment, then back across at her brother. “Do you want to come and say something to him? He’s your nephew, after all.”

Enishi frowned and gestured down at his work, sending a splattering of ink across paper. “Does that mean I’m allowed to get up?”

Since he was no longer attending terakoya, Tomoe had decided that Enishi would continue his education as best as they could manage. They were short on books, and certainly on teachers who had memorized the classics, but he could perfect his character work, at the very least.

“Briefly,” she said, the corners of her eyes and mouth flickering in the smallest of smiles. “For something this important.”

Kenshin sighed, but obligingly moved away from her lap as Enishi approached and knelt down awkwardly in front of his sister.

He looked at her belly for a moment, scrunched up his face, and leaned in close. “Try not to be too loud and annoying. Neechan isn’t as patient as she pretends to be.”

Tomoe huffed loudly and pinched Enishi’s earlobe. “Don’t listen to your Enishi-ojisan. Kaachan is very patient with everyone except him.”

Enishi grimaced, but his expression quickly turned sly. “Also, your father is barely five shaku tall, so don’t expect much there either.”

“Five shaku exactly.” Kenshin didn’t bother looking up from where he lay supine on the floor, hands resting on his chest. “Thank you.”

“My mother was very tall,” Tomoe said to her belly, raising her voice slightly to counteract Enishi’s. She refrained from swatting him. “You may end up with her height.”

“But probably you won’t, so don’t get your hopes up.” Enishi shuffled away, back to the paper and brush left carelessly on the floor. He picked up the brush and scowled. “You know, Neechan, I can’t work under these conditions.”

Tomoe eyed him suspiciously as Kenshin returned his head to her lap. “What conditions?”

“No writing desk.” Enishi gestured expansively around the hut. “Not even a tray table. How can you expect me to learn under such brutal conditions?”

Kenshin snorted.

Tomoe wondered briefly what Hiko-san might say about the conditions if he’d been in the room at the time. Fortunately, he was nowhere within earshot, having tramped off into the woods early in the morning.

“Do you have the characters in front of you?” she asked somewhat rhetorically. “Do you have a brush, and ink, and water, and paper? Do you have a flat, reasonably horizontal place to sit and spread them out?”

“Otousan has a writing desk.” Enishi looked smug.

“Otousan isn’t here.” Tomoe narrowed her eyes at him. “But if he were, do you think he’d accept that excuse? Or do you think he would remind you that the only thing a scholar requires -”

“- is his own mind.” Enishi rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

Kenshin smirked at that, but whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.

“And you do have that,” Tomoe finished sweetly. “Haven’t you?”

Enishi glowered at her, jabbed the tip of the brush into the inkstone, and scrawled something on the paper. Possibly something rude, but at least he was writing.

Tomoe picked up her sewing again, sighed contentedly as she settled back, and smiled as Kenshin’s head was once again jostled to the side by their restless baby.

This may not have been the life she had expected - or even envisioned - but it was good.

…  
...

Hiko drew a deep, cleansing breath and exhaled in a protracted, contented sigh. His breath billowed out in a cloud of thick white steam in the icy air.

The only sounds were those of the branches rustling in the slight, chill breeze and the occasional flap of a bird’s wings or the light crunch of snow under the padded foot of an animal. The sharp scent of woodsmoke did not reach his nostrils. The reassuring pressure of his weighted and countersprung cloak against his shoulders and upper arms was constant, even as the hem fluttered in the wind. And when he closed his eyes, he could feel the very pulse of the mountain’s life all around him.

He had come to depend on solitude throughout most of his life. A man on his own could reach a sort of mental clarity unknown to those with unending companionship. Out in the wilderness, with no company save the thoughts in his own head and the swirl of the natural world around him, he had achieved great understanding and the sort of peace he could not imagine ever coming to men who dwelled in the cities. Or even the villages.

This was why he spent time wandering the woods and the slopes of Mount Atago. To bury himself in nature, to find that solitude and the clarity that came with it.

And besides, now that Kenshin and Tomoe had brought Enishi to live with them and were expecting a baby in the springtime, he was unlikely ever to have that sort of peace inside his own house again.

Not that he supposed he minded that much. After all, he hadn’t thrown them all out yet. And he did have to grudgingly admit that it was pleasant to have the company. Still, there were times when he desperately needed to get away from the constant activity and noise that came from living in a one-room house with three other people, every one of whom was more than a decade his junior.

“Since your seventh summer? Really?”

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s really young, you know.”

“So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

Their voices floated easily across the stillness of the forest - his apprentice in the company of the boy, apparently, though what they were up to, Hiko had no idea.

“So you could just kill ten - no, _twenty_ men - before anyone blinked?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you _could_?”

“I’ve never kept time.”

Their footsteps, clad in straw fukagutsu boots, crunched softly over the snow. Hiko sighed deeply as he realized their voices were coming closer.

“But you _could_? If you wanted to?”

“Why- why are you following me?”

“She’s making baby clothes again. She’s making _diapers!_ How many diapers does one baby need?”

“From what I understand, quite a few.”

They paused in their walking. Hiko could easily imagine his apprentice leaning against a tree, rubbing his forehead in frustration, as the boy - his hair a mess of spiky shapes - peppered him with questions.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“And you haven’t answered mine.”

“Why are you wearing a sword now?”

“That’s a new question.”

Hiko wondered briefly why Kenshin hadn’t simply taken off at top speed to escape the boy’s pestering. A small part of him, though, was finding his apprentice’s clear discomfort immensely entertaining.

“Are you planning on killing someone?”

“What?”

“Right now? Is that why you’re wearing a sword?”

His apprentice made a garbled sound of frustration in reply.

Hiko fought down a snort. He was never without his own blade if he strayed more than a few steps outside the house, and today was no exception. His apprentice had been painstakingly trained never to be without his own weapon, and his experiences in the war had clearly emphasized that training. For the boy not to have known that…

Well, it would have meant that his life had been very sheltered indeed.

“Can I hold it?”

“No.”

“Just for a second?”

“A sword is a weapon, not a toy.”

Well, at least his apprentice had learned that much after so many years. It had been the core of Hiko’s entire philosophy of kenjutsu, and certainly formed the backbone of everything that Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu stood for. But for the son of an Edo samurai not to have learned it by his tenth year seemed deeply suspect to Hiko. What had the boy’s training been like?

“You’re no fun.”

“You’ve said.”

“You’re so boring.”

“You’ve said that too.”

They trudged into view then, both of them bundled up in hanten and straw boots. Kenshin had the fishing basket over his shoulder. Enishi, only a few steps behind, was empty-handed.

“Shishou.” Kenshin blew out a steamy breath. “Tomoe wants fresh fish for dinner. I’m going to try at the deepest part of the river.”

“And I’m keeping him company,” Enishi added.

Hiko privately suspected that Tomoe had requested fresh fish for dinner precisely _because_ Kenshin would have to try at the deepest part of the river. Which meant that he and Enishi would be out of the house for hours, and their inane chatter would go with them. 

If he’d been Tomoe, he would have done the same thing.

And yet, Hiko had to admit that there was a vastly improved quality to that chatter. When the boy had first come to the house, he had looked at Kenshin the way he might have looked at a nest of poisonous centipedes in the corner of his own room. And now, after a few intervening weeks, he had taken to following him around and incessantly peppering him with questions.

“Are you sure you didn’t come along just to escape the _boredom_?” Hiko raised an eyebrow at Enishi. “You’ve been describing a lot of things as _boring_ lately.”

Enishi scowled. “It’s not my fault there’s nothing to do here.”

“Your sister seems to find plenty to do. And so does he.” Hiko indicated Kenshin with his head. “And from what I’ve seen of your calligraphy, you have more than enough that needs doing.”

The boy made a face that was both insulted and flabbergasted, then turned his ire on Kenshin. “He might find plenty to do, but none of it is interesting.”

Kenshin rolled his eyes, but Hiko caught a gleam in them all the same. “You know what?” He put a hand on Enishi’s shoulder. “You’re right.”

Enishi looked up at him. “I am?”

“You are.” Kenshin nodded. “And I can’t bear to subject you to how boring I am any longer. Shishou is much more interesting, and I think the two of you will have a lot more fun together.”

With that, he took off speeding toward the river without a backward glance, leaving Hiko in his wake to stare after him with horror and rage competing for space in his expression.

Enishi stood there in stupefied shock for a second before screwing up his face and shouting, “For the scariest hitokiri in the country, you’re so dull!”

“His wits are, anyway,” Hiko growled, looking at the boy with whom he’d been unceremoniously saddled. “And what about you, boy? Surely you learned something about swords in Edo?”

“Yeah, of course.” Enishi turned his attention to Hiko. “With everyone else in my terakoya. It was required. We studied Genbukan Ryu.” 

Hiko squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the tips of his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.

“Genbukan Ryu?” The words positively dripped with derision. “No wonder you think a sword is a toy.”

He was passingly familiar with the overly ritualized style of kendo, wherein the practitioners clad themselves in bulky and cumbersome armor and flailed away at one another with bamboo sticks. It was nothing but a child’s game, fit for entertaining crowds of dilettantes and corpulent merchants. The difference between kendo and kenjutsu was as huge as the difference between a rainwater puddle and the great sea.

“I never said a sword is a toy!” Enishi snapped. 

“Shinai are certainly toys,” Hiko groused. “Don’t tell me that was the only exposure you had to swordsmanship.”

Enishi studied Hiko for a moment. “No matter what I say now, it’s probably going to be wrong.”

Hiko looked at him appreciatively. “Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right all day.”

The boy scowled. “Is this why Battou- _Himura-san_ turned against his own country? Because of how _fun_ you are?”

“He didn’t turn against his own country-”

“Yes, he did!”

“Dynasties are overthrown all the time, boy,” Hiko barked sourly. “The country has survived every time.”

Enishi gaped at him. “He’s a traitor! Neechan doesn’t want to admit it, because she likes him, but he is. If they ever caught him, they’d probably put his head on a pike in the center of Edo.” He frowned. “Which would be really gross, but they would do that.”

“Yes, they would.” Hiko glowered at Enishi. “People are generally barbaric to one another every chance they get. I taught him Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu so that he could survive in a world where the ignorant and cruel grind the meek to paste under their feet.”

“But he’s trying to destroy the country and our whole way of life.” Enishi’s frown deepened. “Not all by himself, but the Ishin Shishi hate the Bakufu and the samurai, and they’ll kill all of us if they win.”

He looked past Hiko in the direction Kenshin had disappeared. “Neechan likes him though, so she’s probably trying to get him to change his mind.”

Hiko snorted. “I tried for years. Once he makes up his mind about something, he turns to iron.”

Still, he reflected, Tomoe was as persuasive as she was insightful. If anyone had a hope of changing his stubborn apprentice’s mind, she did.

“And no one’s going to kill all the samurai.” Hiko rolled his eyes. “That would be utterly stupid, and it’s the sort of half-baked propaganda they’d feed idiots who can’t be bothered to think things through for themselves or ask questions.”

Enishi’s expression hardened. “They said so at terakoya.”

Hiko looked at him sourly. “They probably said all sorts of things at terakoya that aren’t true.”

“They said if I were made to drink ink, it would dishonor my whole family and I’d be too ashamed to ever show my face again.” Enishi shrugged. “So I drank the whole dish and they sent me home.” He scrunched his face up thoughtfully. “Otousan said it was a waste of ink, but he didn’t say I had dishonored the whole family.”

Hiko blinked.

Another shrug. “I did poorly memorizing the work of the great Kamo no Mabuchi, and they made me drink ink as punishment.” He snorted. “But memorization is stupid and boring. If I want to know what Kamo no Mabuchi thinks, I can just read his works.”

In one expansive sigh, Hiko managed to convey his absolute disgust for an educational system in which the instinct to think was actively driven out of young boys by wizened old fossils who hit them over the head with folding fans for not memorizing the required number of lines of some other wizened old fossil.

“My point is,” Hiko rallied, “that you shouldn’t believe everything they taught you in terakoya.” He frowned. “In fact, the less of it you believe, the better.”

“Otousan said the same thing, but what does he know?” Enishi made a sound of real disgust. “All he ever does is read.”

“Which means he’s educated himself, hasn’t he?” A frown creased Hiko’s forehead. “So learn your characters and perhaps you’ll be able to do the same.”

Another snort of annoyance, then the boy squatted down and poked at the snow with a stick. Without looking up, he said, “He is a traitor though. Himura-san, I mean.”

“The ones who win the war decide who the traitors are.” Hiko’s eyes became suddenly flinty. “Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is invincible. Which means that the side Kenshin fights on will be the side that wins.”

He’d said the exact same thing to his idiot apprentice before losing him. Back then, he’d meant it to dissuade Kenshin from going down there to fight the battles of lesser men. But now, he found that he meant it as a sort of self-reassurance.

Kenshin had upended so many things about his life.

The boy sighed. “I guess you don’t understand because you live up on a mountain away from everyone and everything.”

Hiko glowered at him. “It’s precisely because I understand that I’ve chosen to live up on a mountain away from everyone and everything.”

“I thought he’d be a lot scarier. Or meaner. Or, I don’t know, just… worse.” Enishi tossed the stick aside and rested his hands on his knees. “But he just… does everything Neechan asks him to do, and things she doesn’t even ask for besides.”

“You believed that stupid propaganda about him.” Hiko shook his head. “Well, at least you have an excuse. You’re only ten years old.”

He sank down into a crouch beside Enishi and looked across at him.

“Men much older than you, who were supposed to be much wiser than you, were taken in by it as well. But you know the truth now.” He gave a short huff of laughter. “And isn’t it better for him to be as boring as you seem to think he is, than for him to be some fire-breathing demon with knives for teeth? Isn’t it better for him to be devoted to your sister than for him to be callous or abusive toward her?”

Enishi was silent for a long moment. “He’s very gentle with Neechan, but he’s killed a lot of people, too. I know he has.”

“Of course he has.” Hiko said it levelly and unflinchingly. “Listen to me, boy.”

The words of his old master came to him as easily as it seemed they always had. He could not remember a time in his life when he didn’t know them by heart, and he certainly couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t believe them. 

“A sword is a weapon. The art of the sword is the art of murder.” He looked into Enishi’s eyes as he said it. “Anyone who says differently knows nothing about the world. The sole purpose of any sword style is to kill your adversary before he can kill you.”

Enishi’s eyes widened at that. 

“And the sole purpose of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is to kill every adversary who stands before you, no matter how much larger, stronger, or better armed they may be,” Hiko continued. “It is the ability not merely to survive in a world of murderers and bandits, but to make them fear you enough to give you and those you protect a wide berth.”

Enishi looked away and sighed, breath clouding on the air. “And you’re just fine with that? With him just killing important members of the Bakufu? And then going ice fishing?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course I’m not fine with it.” Hiko tried to temper his annoyance. “I tried to talk him out of even going down there to begin with. I certainly never wanted him to become a hitokiri.”

He sighed. “But the world we live in is a depraved and corrupt one. To imagine that you can go through life without ever having to fight for your life is naive.” He paused and regarded Enishi. “You know this yourself. Your life was entirely in the hands of the Yaminobu.”

Enishi winced. 

“The only reason you’re alive right now is because they chose not to kill you.”

“Do you think they’ll find us here?” Enishi asked quietly.

“I suppose it’s possible.” Hiko shrugged. “You found your sister in the village, after all. But even if they were to find us, between myself and Kenshin, none of them would make it off this mountain.”

The boy shook his head. “They’re the Shogun’s personal onmitsu.”

“Have you been listening, boy?” Hiko stood up again. “Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is invincible. Its sole aim is to allow its practitioner to survive against many adversaries. Onmitsu, soldiers, horsemen, samurai… none of that matters.” 

“None of this makes any sense!” Enishi stood up suddenly, turned away, and took several steps forward, though he didn’t attempt to run off. “I just wanted to find my sister and go home, and instead she married Hitokiri Battousai, of all people, and he’s killed so many people, including Neechan’s own fiance, and then he’s gentle and stupid and boring, and you can’t be both. You can’t be.”

He pressed his hands against his face, muffling his words. “None of it makes any sense at all.”

Hiko hesitated a moment, then reached down and clamped a hand onto Enishi’s shoulder.

“He is who he is,” he said evenly. “Now listen to me very carefully, boy, because I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else before.”

He would always remember the look in Kenshin’s eyes when he found him in that field after a week, his hands filthy and torn, uneven mounds of earth covering the bodies of murderers and their victims alike. He would always remember the stubborn insistence upon compassion that not even the worst experiences in life had been able to grind out of his apprentice.

“The reason I chose him to be my apprentice was because of the gentleness in his soul,” Hiko said quietly. “Because I knew that he was the one least likely to abuse the power I would give him. Because I could have taught anyone in the world how to wield a sword, but I could never have taught even the most skilled swordsman how to be restrained and compassionate.”

He turned Enishi around, still maintaining his grip on the boy’s shoulder. “You see him in the way only a handful of other people have ever seen him. The way your sister sees him.” He sighed. “The way I see him.”

“He’s just… a man.” Enishi’s shoulders slumped. “He should’ve been a monster, but he’s just a boring man like everybody else.”

Hiko nodded once. “As I said, boy, he is who he is.”

And then, with a final squeeze of his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he guided Enishi towards the path back to the house.

…  
...

Tomoe had gotten quite the appetite for freshly-caught fish, and so a few days later, Kenshin once again crouched patiently in front of the carefully chiseled hole in the ice, waiting for a nibble. Two cleanly-gutted fish laid nearby, but he needed at least two more to take home.

Preferably four more, winter appetites being what they were and everyone clamoring for fresh food. (Not to mention his shishou’s voracious appetite, no matter the season.)

Enishi crouched on the other side of the hole. “So you do this every winter?”

Kenshin didn’t look up. “Yes.”

“And it always takes this long?”

“Yes.” 

“And it’s not just because Neechan wants us out of the house?” Enishi asked slyly.

“No.” Kenshin glanced at him. “Maybe. It does take a long time.”

“She’s wanted fresh fish almost every other day.” Enishi went back to staring into the hole. “That’s what I’d do if I wanted people out of the house.”

Kenshin couldn’t think of a reply to that. He returned his attention to the patient business of waiting. 

“Doesn’t it get boring though,” Enishi said suddenly, “being out here in silence with no one to talk to?”

“If there had actually been any silence, maybe I could tell you.” 

“I’d find it boring,” Enishi continued, “just out here with my own thoughts, all alone in the vast, quiet emptiness.”

Kenshin raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

Enishi looked back at him. “Doing what?”

The line tugged, the sudden pressure gently bending the bamboo fishing rod. “Got one.”

Two more fish later, it had gotten too cold and dark to stay out any longer, and the promise of freshly grilled fish was far too strong. 

Kenshin quickly and efficiently gutted the final fish and swept its insides back into the icy water.

“Isn’t that kind of gross?” Enishi asked. “Feeding its guts to its friends and family?”

Not for the first time, Kenshin wondered if this was what having a child would be like. But surely his own son (or daughter, though Tomoe seemed very certain they would have a boy) wouldn’t follow him around, incessantly asking random questions, seemingly without end?

Would he?

“Did you learn how to do this because of your hitokiri work?” Enishi continued.

Kenshin glanced at him and hurriedly tossed the bamboo rod, ice pick, and fish into a basket. “It’s not the same thing at all.”

“Then how?”

“Because I grew up here.” He stood and stretched his back out. “And living off salted fish and pickles for an entire winter makes people go stir-crazy.”

Enishi offered to carry the basket, though instead of slinging it over his shoulder, he carried it in front of him with both arms. The effect was… oddly endearing.

“We don’t really eat a lot of salted fish in Edo.” Enishi kept right on talking as they walked through the woods toward home. “For snacks, sometimes, but even in the winter, there’s always fresh fish.”

“I imagine it’s easier to come by in Edo,” Kenshin said evenly, though he didn’t add that it would almost certainly be easier for an Edo samurai family to acquire fresh food in the winter.

There had always been fresh food at the Kohagiya, after all.

Gone now.

Hastily he pushed that thought aside.

“Probably in Kyoto too.” Enishi squinted up at Kenshin in the dark. “Do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what?” Kenshin said, probably a little more sharply than necessary.

Enishi managed to shrug around the basket in his hands. “Living in Kyoto.”

“No,” Kenshin said without hesitation. “No, I don’t.”

“There’s a lot more to do there though,” Enishi pointed out.

“Yes.” Kenshin worked very hard to keep his thoughts firmly on the freshly grilled fish he would soon be enjoying. “There is.”

They stamped the snow off their straw boots and shook out their hanten before going inside. The smell of miso soup and boiling rice permeated the warm air. The kettle was warming over the hearth. A single flame diffused soft light from the andon lantern.

Kenshin sighed, feeling the tension and cold drain out of his body. “We’re home.”

“We have fish,” Enishi added.

“Bring it right in here, Enishi,” said Tomoe from beside the stove. “And then go and sit by the hearth and have some tea.”

“There’s warmed sake as well,” came Hiko’s voice from one side of the hearth.

“Not for you, there’s not, Enishi,” Tomoe interjected at the eager look on Enishi’s face. She took the basket of fish from him and leaned in to press a quick kiss to Kenshin’s cheek. “You’re sticking with tea.”

“Sake makes your breath smell anyway,” Enishi groused and flung himself prone onto the wooden floor, as Kenshin divested himself of his hanten and fukagutsu boots and stepped into his zori. 

“It’s so cold out there,” he said, and it sounded much whinier than he might have liked. 

“My poor husband.” 

Tomoe put a very warm hand against his very cold cheek, and Kenshin leaned into her soft touch even as “Are you telling me that my breath smells?” drifted over to him as Hiko rose to Enishi’s bait.

“I didn’t say that,” Enishi said quickly. “You said that, not me.”

A small smile drifted across Kenshin’s lips. “No more fresh fish for a while, I think.”

“Go and sit by the fire.” Tomoe cupped his cold face in both her warm hands and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Drink your sake and soak up the warmth and I’ll bring the fish as soon as they’ve finished grilling.”

“Love you,” Kenshin murmured, and let himself linger against her for a moment longer before seating himself at the hearth. 

He ignored Enishi’s muttered, “You’re both so gross,” but gratefully accepted the saucer of warm sake that Hiko pushed into his hand.

“Drink up,” Hiko advised him. “And sit close to the fire. The cold is radiating off you.”

A loud sizzle rose to his ears and the sharp scent of grilling fish immediately wafted over to the hearth. Kenshin’s stomach growled in anticipation.

“Did you say no more fresh fish for a while?” Hiko asked as his own nostrils flared at the tantalizing scent. “You can’t tell me that smell doesn’t make you want to reconsider.”

Kenshin took a deep sip of the sake and closed his eyes as the warmth diffused over his body. “Maybe after I can feel my feet again. Then I’ll at least consider it.”

“Fresh fish is nutritious,” Tomoe said in an almost singsong voice from the stove. “The baby needs his nutrition.”

“You know full well that if your wife tells you she wants fresh fish,” Hiko chuckled, “you’ll go out and get her fresh fish no matter how cold the weather is.”

Kenshin didn’t deign to reply to that nonsense. Mostly because it was true, but that didn’t mean he needed to admit it aloud.

He loved his wife so much.

It may not have been the life he had ever dared hope for, but it was so good.

...

Winter wore on.

The gods saw fit to dump snowfall after snowfall onto Mount Atago, and some days it was difficult to get through the front door, let alone go much further than the small clearing.

After the umpteenth game of shogi (Tomoe was still very good, Kenshin and Hiko not so much, and Enishi didn’t have the patience for it), Tomoe and Enishi constructed a set of rudimentary hanafuda cards and taught Kenshin and Hiko a few different games to while away the seemingly endless hours.

They rotated between eating salted fish from their stores or fresh fish when the snow and the cold weren’t too intolerable. Slowly, gradually, Kenshin taught Enishi the patient art of ice fishing. (The boy might have been short on patience, but boredom didn’t suit him either, and anyway, his hand was steady and he was becoming more efficient at cleanly gutting the fish.)

Hiko disappeared into the woods every few days for hours at a time, likely because living in a small hut with three extra people grated on him in ways that became more obvious when his pointed comments grew to be too much for even Tomoe to bear.

Kenshin broached the topic exactly once. “You know, if it really is too crowded for all of us to live here-”

“Another word, and no one will find you until the thaw,” Hiko snapped.

He didn’t bring it up again.

Tomoe’s belly swelled ever more noticeably, and though she still managed to produce creative meals out of their increasingly repetitive stores of food, she had also slowed considerably and spent more and more time off her feet.

“I can cook,” Kenshin offered. 

“I know,” Tomoe replied with a palpable air of patience. “But you can’t cook _well._ ”

He didn’t argue the point.

“This house is really small,” Enishi brought up over another meal of pickles and salted fish that Tomoe had dressed up with a miso glaze. “You think once the baby comes, we’ll all get really sick of each other?”

Kenshin looked pointedly at Hiko over his rice bowl.

Hiko waited a beat before replying in his most irony-soaked voice.

“You just volunteered to help me expand the house once the springtime comes.” He gave Enishi a sincerely insincere smile. “If you think you’re sick of me now, just wait.”

“How could anyone ever be sick of you?” Kenshin said in his most serene voice. “Shishou.” He shoveled a heap of rice into his mouth to avoid making eye contact.

Enishi snorted.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Tomoe said calmly. “It’ll give Enishi a chance to ask all those questions he always has. And Hiko-san, you’ll love being able to show him your expertise in everything firsthand.”

“You weren’t always so keen on me answering the boy’s questions.” Hiko shot Tomoe a glower. “Not when I was trying to educate him on the very real facts of life. The ones that are making your kimono bulge out in the front, specifically.”

Kenshin nearly choked on his rice, but graciously decided to ignore the smirk Hiko sent his way.

“What facts of life?” Enishi looked between Hiko and Tomoe. “What facts am I missing?”

Tomoe’s eyes seemed to turn to ice as she turned a frozen glare on Hiko.

“Oh, I think your sister should tell you.” Hiko didn’t break eye contact with Tomoe, the smirk on his face never budging in the slightest. “She would do it much more justice than I could, after all.”

“Don’t you have some woods to be wandering in?” Kenshin set his rice bowl down with a glower. “Shishou.”

“But it’s dark and cold.” Enishi frowned. “He’d probably get lost or freeze out there.”

Kenshin _tsk_ ed in annoyance. “Yes, thank you for that. I hadn’t realized.” He picked up his teacup and slurped loudly on the contents.

Which meant Tomoe turned her gaze on him.

“How did the pair of you manage to survive all those winters up here?” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder you didn’t pick one another to death.”

“I had to go easy on him,” Hiko replied immediately. “Otherwise I would’ve had to do the chores on my own. And it was so much more pleasant to send him out to gather wood or fish than to go out there myself.”

“Meaning you enjoyed having someone to unload all the disagreeable tasks onto,” Tomoe responded evenly.

Kenshin nodded. “It’s the entire reason he took me in.”

“Are we really going to expand the house?” Enishi asked through a mouthful of salted fish. “Can we get a real bath then, instead of the rain barrel? Maybe a well? Tatami mats?”

“Tatami mats are pointless up here,” Hiko grunted as he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. “They’d molder faster than we could reweave them, and the floor’s clean enough without them.”

He shifted slightly to face Enishi more directly. “A well would be redundant, seeing as how the house is right next to a stream.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “But I could see my way clear to a larger tub, I suppose. So long as I have help building it.”

Enishi perked up at that, and the two of them went back and forth for a bit, coming up with (and stomping down on) increasingly elaborate construction plans, while Tomoe looked on in bemusement.

Kenshin stared into his teacup. 

It was easy enough, while snowed in and dealing with the monotony of the food and the aggravation of bumping against each other in such a small space, to forget about what might be going on away from the slopes of Mount Atago.

Easy enough to focus on the impending arrival of the baby, and on his wife and brother-in-law and, yes, even his shishou. 

Easy enough, but the problems of the world didn’t go away just because one shut their eyes for a time.

...

Winter dragged on.

Just when the weather started to feel dangerously unbearable - even Tomoe had become moody, though it seemed mostly to manifest as withdrawn, midday journal writing - a week’s worth of late-winter rain brought the thaw one morning. 

The second the rain stopped, Enishi was the first toward the door.

“It’s still cold,” Tomoe started to say. “Take your hanten.” 

Advice which was promptly ignored. Enishi went straight outside in his sleeping yukata. After a quick glance at his wife - frowning slightly over the warming pot of breakfast porridge - Kenshin stepped into his zori and followed.

“It is still cold.” Enishi smiled all the same. “But I really don’t care.”

Kenshin tilted his face toward the weak sun. “Just a few weeks more, and then hopefully spring will come.”

Hiko was outside a moment later, his arms spread wide as if to welcome the damp and chilly air. His sleeping yukata flapped gently around his calves in the morning breeze, and his head was tilted back as he breathed deeply.

“There won’t be any more snow this season,” he said with an air of certainty as he approached Enishi and Kenshin across the soaked and slowly-thawing soil. “You can smell it in the air, can’t you, Kenshin?”

Kenshin nodded. “It’ll be time to plant yams and daikon radishes soon.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Enishi pull a face, though at least he didn’t say anything.

Hiko lowered his head to look at Kenshin. “It’ll be time for your wife to have the baby soon as well.”

Tomoe appeared in the doorway just then, round belly very prominent in the thin fabric of her sleeping yukata.

“Breakfast is ready,” she said, her nostrils flaring slightly as she caught a whiff of the fresh, damp air. “Is that springtime I smell, or is it just wishful thinking?”

“Not just yet,” Hiko offered with a slight smile, “but soon.” He took a deep breath of the air through his nose and exhaled it with a satisfied sound. “We may be able to head down the mountain in another week or so.”

“Another week?” Tomoe’s face fell.

“As the snow melts, the river will rise,” Kenshin explained. “Sometimes there are floods, sometimes mudslides, down the side of the mountain.”

Tomoe frowned.

“Can we slide down them?” Enishi asked.

Hiko slowly turned his head and looked at Enishi with mingled incredulity and annoyance.

“No, Enishi,” Tomoe sighed. “You’d die.”

“Says you.” Enishi shrugged and headed back inside the house. “I’m hungry, Neechan. Can we eat?”

Not for the first time - or fifth time, or however many times - Kenshin wondered if this was, indeed, what having a child would be like.

He supposed he’d find out soon enough.

...

Winter finally gave way to spring.

The heavy rainfall did cause the river to rise, but not alarmingly so, and the few minor mudslides that happened along their usual walking paths were dealt with easily enough by Kenshin and Hiko. 

Kenshin had lived there most of his life, after all, and so was prepared to deal with such a thing. Though it did mean returning home almost comically muddy. (Luckily the bathwater was no longer frozen, and therefore no longer took hours to heat.)

The rain brought greenery, and soon the mountain was awash in fresh growth. 

Kenshin turned his attention the garden. With the near constant downpour, aggressive weeding became a daily activity, but at least he had Enishi for assistance now. (The boy was initially far more interested in the slugs and snails he found in the garden, but he did prove to be helpful eventually.)

Tomoe slowed down considerably, her belly distractingly large now, though she still didn’t let Kenshin take over the cooking. When he brought her the first daikon radishes of the season, she made braised daikon soup and grilled fresh fish with grated daikon sprinkled over the top.

Kenshin had no words for how good it was to have fresh food again, but he ate every last bite in absolute appreciation, and so did everyone else in the house.

When they finally had a day of clear skies, Tomoe also insisted that Kenshin take her down the mountain and into the village. And, of course, Enishi insisted that he come along, too. (Hiko, on the other hand, seemed relieved to have the house to himself for a few hours.)

“Take your time,” he chuckled as they left. “It’ll be a holiday for us all.”

Heading down the mountain was slow-going. The paths were still muddy and caked with dead leaves, and Kenshin held Tomoe’s hand as they carefully picked their way downward. 

Enishi, however, kept darting ahead of them and then skipping back up with new suggestions about what they should buy in the village.

“Like dango. Or uiro mochi cakes. Or eel! Hey, can we get eel?”

Kenshin raised an eyebrow. “You went from sweets to fish without taking a breath.”

Enishi shrugged. “Grilled eel is delicious, at least the way Neechan makes it.”

“I like to cook,” Tomoe shrugged in return, keeping a tight hold on Kenshin’s hand as she negotiated her way carefully down a slippery stretch of the path. “And everyone else seems to like it as well.”

The village was bustling with activity. 

It appeared every villager had likewise grown sick of winter and resolved to be out of doors the moment it was possible. The roads were lined with peddlers selling everything from sweets to brooms, tofu to pinwheels, and it was impossible not to buy _something_.

They ended up crunching on a handful of freshly-made senbei rice crackers and then several sticks of dango before heading toward the midwife’s house.

“Kenshin, why don’t you go and see about that eel.” Tomoe gave his hand a light squeeze before entering the doorway. “Onba-san hasn’t seen me all winter. This may take some time.”

“I’ll find something you like,” Kenshin promised, and then Tomoe disappeared into the darkness of Onba-san’s house. 

“Can we see about that eel?” Enishi followed Kenshin toward another cluster of peddlers closer to the center of the village. “Or soba? Remember that soba place? Can we see about soba? Or, look!” He caught up to Kenshin and pointed a little ways down the road. “Tempura! Let’s have tempura.”

Kenshin turned to where Enishi was pointing, eyes flickering over the village notice board. One fluttering bit of paper caught his attention.

**‘CHOSHU TRAITORS PUT TO DEATH!’**

His stomach clenched, and he fought down the sudden rush of bile hot in his throat.

“Hey?” Enishi tugged on his sleeve. “Kenshin? You’re the one with the money. Tempura or soba?”

“What?” Kenshin shook his head and looked down at him.

Enishi frowned. “Tempura or soba?”

“Uh.” Kenshin pulled the coin purse out of his haori and dropped some money into Enishi’s hand. “Surprise me.”

“Really?” Enishi grinned and danced back a few steps, clenching the coins tightly in his fist. “Can’t change your mind now. Be right back!” He turned and dashed toward the cluster of peddlers.

Kenshin watched him go, then carefully approached the notice board, almost as if the act of reading the broadsheets was treason itself.

No one was watching, and his expression was carefully neutral, and anyway, reading the broadsheets _wasn’t_ treason. They were posted for a reason, after all. 

Quickly he scanned the broadsheet: several Choshu samurai had been executed on orders of the shogun as punishment for the Kyoto fire. And with the cooperation of Satsuma daimyo, Saigo Takamori, who ‘nobly provided the names of the terrorist radicals and traitors, thusly restoring the honor of the Satsuma domain.’

Goddamned _traitor_.

He skimmed over the list of those put to death. Katsura-san’s name wasn’t there. Neither was Takasugi Shinsaku’s (and apparently the Kiheitai were wanted for ‘radical criminal activity’), but their absence didn’t make up for the deaths of dozens of others.

At the bottom of the broadsheet, almost as an afterthought, was one final statement:

**‘SECOND CHOSHU EXPEDITION PLANNED! ENEMIES OF THE BAKUFU WILL BE DESTROYED!’**

His expression hardened, and before he could think better of it, he ripped the broadsheet off the board, folded it, and shoved it into the sleeve of his haori.

Enishi was back moments later, mouth full of steaming hot food and holding three sticks of what appeared to be lotus root tempura. He shoved one stick into Kenshin’s hand.

“I told the ojisan that my sister is having a baby soon, and he threw in the third stick for free.” 

“Not bad.”

Kenshin nibbled on the batter-fried lotus root, and eventually Tomoe reappeared, and she was grateful for the food, and they must have walked around and done a few other things, but his mind was elsewhere.

“Kenshin?” Tomoe asked after some time had gone by. He didn’t know how much time, but they were in a different part of the village. “Aren’t you going to ask me how the visit with Onba-san was?”

There was clear concern in her voice, bordering on hurt, and it cut into his thoughts quite abruptly.

Enishi crunched loudly on a fried karintou stick. Kenshin didn’t remember when or even where they had stopped to buy those.

“Yes.” He shook his head and recentered himself firmly on the village, and more importantly, on his _wife_ and their baby. “Yes, of course. How did it go?”

“Everything’s fine.” Tomoe’s eyes were filled with concern, and her arm tightened in his. “Though she wants me to start paying attention to the way I feel and go to her as soon as I think the baby might be ready to come.”

His eyes widened at that, but he didn’t ask how she would know when the baby might be ready to come. It seemed like the sort of thing women were meant to know.

“Reasonable,” he managed to say. “Sounds reasonable.”

Enishi snorted. “You’re so dull.” Off Tomoe’s look, he added, “Himura-san.”

“I told her about my mother as well.” Tomoe turned her focus back to Kenshin. A hush crept into her voice, and the concern in her eyes became tinged with something darker. “She said it wasn’t something I should worry myself with, but she had a look in her eyes…” 

She shook her head, her arm laced tightly through Kenshin’s. “I’ve been trying not to worry about it all winter. The baby’s moving all the time, he’s healthy, and I’ve felt perfectly fine, but I still can’t help thinking about it.”

“You’ll be fine,” Kenshin said immediately. Firmly. Because the idea of his wife not being fine, the idea of her not making it through childbirth-

_No._

He wasn’t even going to entertain the thought. Not for a moment. Madness waited down that path. 

“You’ll be fine,” he repeated, lacing his fingers through hers. “Our baby will be fine. Everything will work out.”

Enishi crunched on another karintou stick.

...

They found a fishmonger selling fresh eel, and they also bought a bundle of dry soba, along with various other necessities that Tomoe needed to restock the kitchen with after the long winter.

That evening, she made grilled eel over soba, and it was only when Kenshin was slurping down a mouthful of noodles that he noticed the haiku pasted to the wall.

_Sake in summer._  
_Winter, spring, and autumn too._  
_Shishou drinks too much._

“Why-” He nearly choked and had to set his bowl down before glaring across the hearth at Hiko. “Why is that there?” He gestured to the wall with his chopsticks, so of course, Tomoe and Enishi turned to look as well.

“Because I thought it had been sitting in the tansu chest for long enough.” Hiko looked disturbingly satisfied with himself, smiling broadly over his own bowl of eel and soba. “Besides, the boy should have an example of what passingly good calligraphy looks like.”

Tomoe did her best to hide her smile with her bowl, but her eyes gave her away. Enishi, meanwhile, laughed so hard that Kenshin was surprised not to see soba coming out of his nose.

“You wrote that?” He turned his gleeful expression on Kenshin, and this time he snorted so hard, broth did come out of his nose and he started coughing.

“Breathe, boy.” Hiko whacked him hard between the shoulderblades with a massive palm. “Kenshin’s poetry hasn’t killed anyone yet, but it hasn’t been for lack of trying.”

Tomoe was still smiling behind her bowl, and she looked over at Hiko with an expression that suggested she understood something that his shishou didn’t. 

“I didn’t know you were a poet,” Enishi rasped, wiping his kimono sleeve across his dripping nose. 

“It’s…” Kenshin picked up his bowl. “It’s my only piece.”

“But it’s a _masterpiece_.” Enishi nodded. “Otousan says that good haiku really speaks to the truth of humanity.”

“It is an acknowledged truth of humanity that sake makes everything better.” Hiko set down his bowl and reached for the jug. “Your incorrect opinion about the amount I drink notwithstanding.”

Tomoe barely hid behind her bowl in time.

...

They had settled into an easy evening routine. 

Everyone took baths, and then it was time for the evening game of shogi over cups of tea. Tomoe remained the best player in the house, Kenshin and Hiko insisted they were improving, and Enishi, who still lacked the patience for the game, didn’t hesitate to offer colorful running commentary no matter who was playing.

The nights grew warmer, and that encouraged them outside once the shogi board had been put away. Hiko and Enishi continued to discuss increasingly elaborate and fantastical renovation plans, Tomoe would add a sensible comment here and there, and Kenshin mostly found himself content to listen.

Enishi usually went to bed first, though Tomoe had beaten him to that several times lately, but gradually they would all drift to bed. The last one up blew out the lantern.

It was easy, and it was comfortable.

And yet, Kenshin found himself standing outside the hut in the middle of the night, clad in his sleeping yukata, hair spilling down his back.

He had been restless enough that the hair cord had come loose and was currently lost in his futon somewhere. Restless enough that Tomoe, half-asleep, had reached out a steadying hand to soothe him back to sleep, and when that didn’t work, he crept out of the house before he woke everyone.

The broadsheet was in his hand, and though the moon was partially obscured by murky clouds, he had long since mastered reading and moving about in the dark. 

He read the broadsheet carefully and slowly this time, and then again, and then again until he wanted to crumple the damn thing up and find Saigo Takamori or the officials who had ordered the executions or even the goddamned shogun himself and-

And _what?_

He realized he was clenching his jaw so tightly, it hurt, and he forced himself to relax and breathe and _think._

Tomoe was due to have their baby in a matter of weeks. She was his wife, and she needed him, and their baby would need him too. 

And yet…

The world didn’t stop burning just because his own life had become comfortable. The corruption and the cruelty and needless suffering hadn’t ceased just because it was easiest to hide on a mountain and play house and forget about the outside world.

But Tomoe did need him. And their baby would need him.

The door to the hut slid open, followed by soft footsteps, and Kenshin turned to look at his wife, bleary with sleepiness in the gentle moonlight.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” Tomoe yawned, running a hand through sleep-tousled hair. “The baby keeps pushing against my insides, and it makes me need to visit the privy at least four times a night.”

She tottered off in that direction, returned a few minutes later, and should have gone directly back to bed. Instead she looked at Kenshin for a moment, and must have seen something that made her frown.

“Kenshin?” She came up beside him and reached for his hand, but found the broadsheet instead. 

Maybe he should have snatched it away, but he let it slip through his fingers. 

“What’s this?” she asked, bringing the paper up and reading it quickly, face going pale and slack. She froze for a moment, then reached out again for Kenshin, her eyes flickering from the broadsheet to his face as her hand lightly came to rest on his waist.

“You’re thinking about going back,” she said in a hushed voice. She did not phrase it as a question.

“I didn’t write it,” he breathed. She knew that, of course she knew that, and yet... “Those aren’t my words.”

Her eyes filled with concern. “You didn’t have to write those words for them to affect you.”

He remained silent, and after a moment, she spoke again.

“Seeing that paper, reading it, blocked everything else out of your mind.” Her voice was still hushed, and a hint of pain came into it. “Even our son.”

He winced at that, but Tomoe continued:

“And so it hardly matters who wrote those words. What matters is what I can see them doing to you.”

She pressed herself against him suddenly, her head coming to rest against his shoulder and the roundness of her belly firm against him.

“You’re going to go back,” she said again. “If you haven’t already made up your mind, you will soon.”

Words stuck in his throat, or maybe he just didn’t know what to say.

He slid his arms around her waist and breathed in the warm, comforting scent of her - bath soap and the faintest trace of hakubaikou.

(She was running out of the perfume, she had said, and had to carefully ration it now. He made note to figure out where he might buy some, and the incongruity of that thought pulled him up short.)

“Our son is never blocked out of my mind,” he murmured. “And neither are you.”

Her arms tightened around him - he could hear the crackling of the paper as the broadsheet crumpled in her hand - and she whispered into his shoulder.

“But you’re still going to go back.”

“I didn’t say that.” He could hear the desperation in his voice, and he didn’t know how to quell it. 

“Then what are you saying?” She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. He could see his face mirrored in each shining surface, and he could see her need for reassurance just as clearly.

He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, waiting for the truth to come to him. His wife - and their son - deserved more than whatever empty platitudes he might come up with.

Finally, he said, “I want to see our son.” After a moment, he added, “Or our daughter. We really don’t know, do we?”

“No,” Tomoe murmured. “I suppose we don’t. But I want you to see him too. Or her,” she added as though it were an afterthought. “And none of us, you included, are going to be happy about you leaving afterwards.”

He suddenly, desperately wanted the conversation to be over - even though he knew very well that it would come up again - and was about to suggest they go back to bed when he felt strange movement against his own stomach.

“He’s awake.” Kenshin stepped back and looked down in time to watch the shape of what might have been a foot actually undulate across the sphere of Tomoe’s belly. “And… very active.”

Tomoe placed both hands lovingly and protectively over her stomach. Her fingertips caressed her belly through the fabric of her yukata, and Kenshin had a sudden, vivid image of her caressing their baby just as gently.

“He wants you to come to bed.” She looked back up at him with a small smile, her eyes still tinged with sadness and the hint of trepidation. “And so do I. But we still need to talk about this.”

Of course they did, but at least it could wait a little bit longer.

Kenshin took the crumpled broadsheet back from Tomoe, folded it up, and slid it inside the sleeve of his yukata before guiding Tomoe back into the house.

The next evening, while heating up the bath, he fed the broadsheet into the fire.

...

“Kenshin?”

Kenshin’s eyes flew open and he was up in his futon before he even fully realized what was going on. 

The hut was completely dark - it must have been the middle of the night - and Tomoe clutched at the sleeve of his sleeping yukata.

“I think…” She took a couple of deep, shaky breaths. “I think the baby’s about to come.” Her voice sounded ragged, hollow. “I feel it. I feel…”

His eyes widened.

For a single, stupefied second, he couldn’t move, couldn’t think properly, and was actually relieved to hear a gruff, “Well, don’t just sit there, boy. Light the lamp,” on the other side of him.

“Of course.” He scrabbled for the andon lantern, and only when he managed to open the shoji and light the wick did he realize his hands were shaking. 

“It -” Tomoe gave a sharp gasp. “It hurts. She said… Onba-san said it would…” Her voice trailed off as the light from the lamp rose and illuminated the room. 

“What’s going on?” Enishi sat up in his futon on the other side of his sister, rubbing his eyes. “Why’s everyone talking so much?”

A pool of blood had blossomed underneath Tomoe, staining both the futon and her yukata a terrifying scarlet. 

“Get the midwife.” Kenshin’s throat had gone very dry. “Shishou? Enishi? Now.”

Hiko was on his feet in an instant, scooping Enishi up and hustling him away from the futon so that the boy would be spared the horrific sight. As he pulled on his boots, his eyes met Kenshin’s.

“Get her into the bath.” His voice was clipped and commanding. He reached out a hand for his cloak, but hesitated and let his hand drop. 

The heavy cloak, weighted and fitted with countersprings to dull the power of his massive muscles, would hinder his speed. And as his unwavering gaze locked with Kenshin’s, there was a look in his eyes that said he would move faster than he ever had before to bring the midwife back with him.

“Move, boy,” he ordered Enishi sharply, seizing his sword and wrenching the door open. “We’re in a hurry.”

“No, wait.” Enishi shook his head. “I’m not- I’m not leaving Neechan.”

“I won’t be alone, Enishi.” Tomoe’s voice sounded tight, clenched, and her face had paled significantly. “But you…” she gasped again. “You need to go. Please.”

“No-” Enishi started.

Kenshin gritted his teeth. “Onba-san isn’t going to go with an armed stranger in the middle of the night unless you’re there too, Enishi.” He whipped his head around and tried not to growl the words. “Now go!”

Enishi’s eyes widened. “Okay.” He stepped into his zori. “Okay, I’m going.”

Hiko hustled Enishi out the door with a last, bolstering gaze in Kenshin’s direction. The house was suddenly very quiet in their absence.

“Kenshin?” Tomoe’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried through the ominous quiet. “Help me…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> So a whole lotta history came up in this chapter. (Okay, two things.)
> 
> The whole drinking ink at terakoya thing? Was an actual punishment for male students in Japan and China during that time period. Sumi ink was made of various kinds of soot and animal glue (yes, you read that right), so while it probably tasted disgusting and left quite the stain on teeth, it wasn't toxic.
> 
> Satsuma daimyo, Saigo Takamori, did temporarily betray the Ishin Shishi alliance (also known as the Satcho alliance) in order to save more people than ended up being executed. And the First and Second Choshu Expeditions were absolutely a thing. (In fact, you see flashes of the Second Expedition during the end credits of the OAV.)
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> This was a long chapter at 10k words, but breaking it up into two smaller chapters didn't quite work either. Thanks for sticking with it.
> 
> As always, your comments, questions, feedback, and general keyboard mashing are encouraged, hoped for, and warmly received. Talk to me, and I talk to you. It's a glorious cycle! You can also say hi on tumblr at frostyemma.


	11. Meimeishiki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kenshin dumped her into the bath without even pausing to remove her sleeping yukata or the white cotton obi she had worn wrapped around her belly ever since the Obi Iwai ceremony.
> 
> “It’ll be fine,” he murmured, and she wasn’t sure who he was meant to be reassuring. “Everything will be fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Obi Iwai : Shinto ritual meant for the safe delivery of a baby  
> Onba-san : literally means “Ms. Midwife”  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack

**A few moments later  
(May1865)**

The late spring weather had been pleasantly warm and breezy after the harsh winter and the damp and stormy early spring. 

The air had been filled with the sweet scent of flowers growing, the sun had been bright and consistent, the river had been positively teeming with fish (which Kenshin had been only too happy to go out and catch for their dinner) and the garden had been steadily yielding new and delicious vegetables.

Tomoe had spent many days sitting or reclining in the house and basking in the wonderful weather. 

Kenshin and Hiko-san had gradually taken over more and more of the housework as Tomoe herself became less capable of keeping up with it. Her swelling belly and the surprising ease with which she exhausted her energy made her of limited use, but no one else seemed to mind. Even Enishi had managed to refrain from griping about the extra work he had to do; indeed, he was always ready to do anything she might have asked of him.

In the evenings, she played shogi when she could muster the energy and lounged beside Kenshin when she could not. She listened to Enishi and Hiko-san discuss their plans for the house, watched the stars and the moon come out, sipped her tea, and simply soaked in the peaceful and enjoyable atmosphere of their secluded home on the mountain.

It was a late spring that promised a beautiful summer.

But now, with a hazy curtain of red pain fogging her mind, Tomoe clutched her searing lower belly and prayed that her child would live to see it. 

It already seemed likely that she herself would not.

Kenshin dumped her into the bath without even pausing to remove her sleeping yukata or the white cotton obi she had worn wrapped around her belly ever since the Obi Iwai ceremony.

“It’ll be fine,” he murmured, and she wasn’t sure who he was meant to be reassuring. “Everything will be fine.”

A stabbing pain lanced through her, white-hot between her legs and upward into her belly. The baby squirmed inside of her, as if fighting to escape from some awful trap. The pain stole the breath from her lungs, squeezing them until bright flashing spots winked before her eyes.

When she could draw a ragged gasp - when the horrible pain ebbed for a moment at last and became at least endurable - she opened her eyes and saw a sight that made icy terror grip her heart.

The water in the bath was red. Her sleeping yukata was splotched with dark patches. Even the obi - the embodiment of her fervent prayers for the baby’s safety - had been stained with blood.

Horror and nausea made her bring up her hands and begin pulling at the clothes, shedding them as a snake would shed its skin, peeling the awful, clinging things away from her only to curl back in on herself as another shock of pain slammed into her and stole away her breath.

Kenshin’s hands were on her then, dragging the wet yukata and the obi off her and tossing them to the floor somewhere. He was speaking to her, but she couldn’t make out the words in her haze of pain and fear, couldn’t make out anything.

She was going to die.

The thought clawed its way into the front of her mind as the pain tore at everything she desperately tried to put in its path. She would die trying to bring her child into the world, just as her poor mother had died trying to birth Enishi. She would die here, with her poor husband by her side, and nothing he could do would help her.

She would die here, far from where she had been born, and her poor father would never know.

All sense of time slipped away from her, and she had no idea if minutes or hours had passed when the door to the bath shed banged open, revealing Hiko-san holding a portable tansu chest. 

The midwife was clinging to Hiko-san’s back, or maybe Tomoe was hallucinating from pain. 

Either way, Onba-san was in front of her suddenly, and she must have said something to Kenshin, as he lifted her out of the tub and carried her back into the hut. 

“You need to be up, girl.” Onba-san wrapped a clean yukata around her shoulders; from where she had gotten it, Tomoe had no idea. “You need to be walking.”

Tomoe did not know if her legs would even support her. More likely, they would give way beneath her when the next wave of searing pain burned through her. She looked up at Onba-san with pleading eyes and tried to tell her she would try, but she couldn’t tell if she was actually speaking or not. 

Somehow, Onba-san got her onto her feet, and somehow they managed to traverse the wooden floor, though with considerable effort.

Still, she was walking.

The door slid open with a sharp crack, and Enishi stood in the doorway, sweat-soaked and panting.

“He ran,” Enishi gasped. “Hiko-san ran the whole way.”

Onba-san’s assistant - a young woman of Tomoe’s age called Miyuki - elbowed past Enishi and slammed the door shut in his face.

“We ran, too.” Miyuki leaned against the door and took several heaving breaths. “But we couldn’t keep up.”

“Rice,” Onba-san ordered. “She needs to eat.”

While Miyuki hurried to start a pot of rice, Tomoe felt another wrenching wave of agony twist at her insides. The bones of her hips felt as though they were creaking, cracking, about to snap. Her legs shivered beneath her and gave way; Onba-san got a sturdy shoulder underneath her to save her from collapsing to the floorboards.

Only then did she notice that Kenshin was gone.

“Kenshin?” she heard herself croak. “Where…?”

The pain seized her in its teeth again, and the croak turned into an incoherent groan.

“This is no place for men.” Miyuki didn’t turn from the rice pot. “We’re in for a long night.”

Onba-san placed a hand against the lower section of Tomoe’s belly, fingers kneading the flesh. “Feel that? Like a bag of rice between your legs?”

It felt like a boulder. Huge, heavy, unyielding, forcing its way into the bones of her pelvis with a pressure that burned like fire. Her body, meanwhile, seemed to be out of her control, all its muscles working together in a desperate attempt to squeeze the boulder out of her - regardless of how much the exit might cost her.

“Hurts…”

She seized Onba-san’s hand with all the desperate strength she could manage - and yet her grip was like water. The pain was stealing away her strength, stealing the breath from her lungs, stealing even her awareness. And it only seemed to be getting worse every time it hit.

“It hurts!”

“Of course it hurts.” Onba-san wrapped an arm around Tomoe’s waist and once again walked her across the floor. “I told you it would hurt. It hurt for every woman before you, and it will hurt for every woman after.”

Tomoe looked at her with every bit of incredulity she could muster.

The midwife remained completely unperturbed. “Now breathe.”

Time seemed to spiral in on itself. Tomoe lost count of the waves of pain, of the number of steps she forced herself to take, of the times Onba-san half-dragged her from one end of the house to the other and back again.

Periodically a spoon or a cup would appear before her lips, and she would mechanically eat the rice or drink the tea that Miyuki fed to her. She ate and drank without tasting anything, and more than once when the pain slammed into her, she felt as though she would vomit.

_Was this what it was like for you, Okaasan?_

Tomoe had no idea whether she was speaking aloud.

_Was this how much it hurt to give me life? Was this the last thing you felt before you left this world?_

“Stoke the fire in the hearth,” she heard Onba-san say to her assistant. “And get me the primrose oil.”

_Will I join you tonight?_

She was vaguely aware of Miyuki digging in the tansu chest, and then a spoonful of strange-smelling oil was pressed against Tomoe’s lips.

“Drink up,” Miyuki encouraged, “and don’t think too much about the taste.”

The thin oil was bitter and pungent on Tomoe’s tongue, but she noticed it only as a passing curiosity amidst the pain that now had gone beyond ebbing and flowing. It was constant now, a steady and awful pressure that had pushed her mind almost out of her body. And yet, oddly enough, it was beginning to feel like a distant and removed sensation, as if she were remembering it rather than experiencing it.

She wondered whether that was the work of the oil, or whether something worse was afoot.

She was conscious of Onba-san and Miyuki talking, of being fed more oil and rice and tea, and of the room getting hotter as the fire rose unseasonably high in the hearth. She was vaguely aware of Miyuki helping her to squat down, of Onba-san investigating her most private area and pulling away with a frown on her face.

Tomoe did not want to wonder about the significance of that frown. Especially not once the time-blurred face of her mother began to float before her mind’s eye again.

The words “too much blood” and “stuck” and something about a dangerously-wrapped cord filtered past her ears without any thought of what they could mean. All she knew was a delirious, pain-drenched blur of heat and nausea and exhaustion and the desperate desire to get the baby out of her.

Living through the experience seemed increasingly like an extravagance.

Onba-san muttered something about blue ginseng, and through a delirious curtain of pain, Tomoe might have seen Miyuki pour a paper sleeve of powder into a cup of tea.

“That’ll about do it.” Onba-san pushed the cup against Tomoe’s mouth. “Drink now.”

Mindlessly, Tomoe swallowed the hot liquid, tasting nothing, sweat beading on her face as the heat from the fire and the exertion of her body took their toll. If this medicine did not work…

Time stretched out and fell in on itself. 

Tomoe’s body began to shudder and contort of its own free will, the pain still there but different now, and perhaps it was only her closeness to death that gave her the sudden feeling that there was a way out now, finally, if she could only just push as hard as she could in time with the wracking waves of agony that battered her over and over.

She did.

She pushed, bearing down with all the faint energy she had left, feeling the huge mass within her shift and turn, and then she had no choice - she _had_ to push, just as she had to breathe in great heaving gasps, and just as she had to let her body shudder with the exertion of it.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she heard Onba-san say, though her voice sounded very far away. “Keep going, keep going.”

She felt a great tidal wave wash over her body, and just when she was at its crest - just when she was ready to let go and topple downward into a dark abyss forever - the wave crashed and flowed out of her in a sudden rush. 

A high-pitched wail cut across the sudden silence in the room.

Tomoe was aware of her knees giving out, of Miyuki half-dragging her to a futon, and of hands tucking and prepping and finishing the work they had begun. 

And then a bundle - a tiny, squirming, bloody bundle - was pushed into her arms.

“A boy,” Onba-san said. “You have a boy.”

“A son?” 

Tomoe was hardly aware that the croak was coming from her own throat. Indeed, she was hardly aware of the pain anymore. Everything seemed to be so distant, except for the tiny form of her perfect little newborn boy.

She looked up into Onba-san’s face with exhausted eyes. “My son?”

“Well, I hope so.” Onba-san’s shoulders drooped - just for a moment - and only when she pulled the kerchief out of her hair and mopped her sweating face with it did Tomoe realize how long Onba-san - and Miyuki - had been awake as well.

Miyuki eased the door open, and though she was exhausted, Tomoe was shocked to see sunlight filter through the crack.

“Lunchtime,” Miyuki observed. “I’ll make ochazuke.”

“I’ll show you how to feed your boy.” Onba-san looked at Tomoe. “And then you should rest. And after that, we’ll talk about a few things.”

They wiped the baby clean, wrapped him in one of the many diapers Tomoe had made, and then swaddled him with the sort of brisk efficiency that Tomoe hoped she would develop over time. 

Miyuki spoonfed Tomoe mouthful after mouthful of ochazuke, and Onba-san put the baby back in Tomoe’s arms. After some awkward maneuvering and prodding, he latched clumsily onto her and began to nurse. She noticed, looking down at him, that he had a soft and fine fluff of hair - hair the same shade as his father’s.

His father, who threw the door open with a bang and half-staggered, half-ran into the room, not stopping until he had clambered onto the wooden floor and knelt by Tomoe’s side.

“I’m not staying out there anymore.” Kenshin looked both exhausted and wild-eyed. “I don’t care what the midwife says.” He glanced at Onba-san and bobbed his head. “My apologies, but I don’t.”

Onba-san shrugged and ate a spoonful of ochazuke. “Suit yourself, but you might change your mind when I start stitching her up.”

“No place for men,” Miyuki added, feeding Tomoe another bite of ochazuke.

“I’ve seen worse,” Kenshin said promptly, then shifted his attention back to Tomoe. He reached out and smoothed her hair - damp and sweaty and clinging to her cheeks - away from her face. “How are you? And how is…”

He looked down at the baby, still nursing industriously, and his eyes widened. 

“Oh,” he murmured. “Oh no.”

“He’s fine,” Tomoe whispered, her body mostly numb and limp after its ordeal. She reached up with the hand that wasn’t cradling the baby’s head against her and tried to touch Kenshin’s cheek, but her fingers were loath to respond. “We’re both fine. And he’s so beautiful, isn’t he?”

Kenshin seemed to hesitate a moment, then gently and carefully brushed his fingertips across the soft fluff of baby hair. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I had hoped his hair would be… normal.”

Tomoe frowned up at him and pressed her limp hand to his face.

“Stop that,” she said. “Look at him. Look at how much he looks like you.” She smiled down at the baby. “He’s perfect.”

“His face is squishy.” Kenshin raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying my face is squishy?”

Onba-san snorted over her ochazuke. “He’ll plump up in time.”

Tomoe cradled the baby to her, her hand cupping his tiny head, and felt as though she could simply float away on the cloud of exhaustion that had wrung the feeling from her body. The earlier pain was only a memory; indeed, she couldn’t feel much of anything below her chest. And she was so extraordinarily tired that she felt her eyelids tugging themselves downwards as if in protest.

Before long, Miyuki had taken the baby from Tomoe, expertly burped him, and then handed him over to a wide-eyed Kenshin, while Onba-san performed the necessary stitching.

Tomoe was so wrung out, the whole ordeal so painful, that she didn’t feel a thing, and she was nearly asleep by the time Onba-san gave her a sponge bath and helped her into a clean yukata. 

She barely noticed Miyuki-san cleaning the wooden floor, and it took her a very long moment to realize she was wiping up a considerable amount of blood. 

“Bed rest for thirty days,” Onba-san said, startling Tomoe back into consciousness. She deposited her stitching supplies into a drawer of the tansu chest and closed it with a sharp snap. “And don’t consider arguing about it either.”

Tomoe nodded in agreement, feeling the exhaustion dragging her back down towards sleep. Thirty days sounded like a reasonable amount of time to rest in bed after what she’d just been through. 

“We’ll take care of her,” Kenshin murmured. The baby had fallen asleep in his arms, and his eyes were fixed on his precious little face. “We all will.”

“Good, because she nearly died,” Onba-san said frankly. She looked at Tomoe. “Your pelvic bones are misaligned and you tore yourself up getting the baby out. By all rights, the both of you…” She waved her hand about. “Well, consider yourself very lucky.”

Suddenly lucid, Tomoe stared back at Onba-san without blinking. She’d spent the entire time thinking that she would die, but hearing Onba-san say it aloud made it seem somehow more real. 

A chill ran through her, her shoulders shivering involuntarily, and she suddenly wanted very badly to hold her baby again. He had nearly died too. Had it not been for Onba-san’s help…

“I am lucky,” she whispered. “Lucky to have had you here. I cannot thank you enough.”

“Be happy that you’ve had a son,” Onba-san continued as if she hadn’t heard Tomoe at all. “I have a feeling you won’t be able to have any others.”

Tomoe nodded somewhat numbly, so grateful that she and her son had survived that the prospect of never going through the experience again seemed almost welcome. 

Kenshin’s mouth thinned into a line, but whatever he might have been thinking, he kept it to himself. 

“Anyway,” Onba-san stood and picked up her tansu chest, “have your father-in-law escort me up here this time next week.” Her expression turned sly. “I’ve never ridden a horse before. It was quite exhilarating.”

“I…” Kenshin shook his head. “I didn’t need to hear that.”

“Running up the mountain in the dark with a child leading the way was the exact opposite of exhilarating,” Miyuki grumbled on the way out the door. “It should be my turn to ride him next time.”

Kenshin sucked in his breath, waited a moment, then clambered awkwardly to his feet, baby still tucked in his arms.

“Thank you for everything.” He bowed deeply, though somewhat clumsily. “You saved my wife’s life. None of us will ever forget that.”

Tomoe murmured her own soft, exhausted thanks as the two women headed out the door. From outside came Hiko-san’s steady voice offering to escort them back down the mountain to the village and Enishi loudly proclaiming that he wanted to be let in to see his sister.

Two seconds later, the door slid open with a bang and Enishi bolted into the room. He brushed past Kenshin (and the baby in his arms) and knelt down on the other side of Tomoe.

“Neechan.” Without hesitation, he threw his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. 

“I’m all right, Enishi.” 

She reached up with a nearly limp arm and weakly embraced him, trying to put a strength into her voice that she simply did not feel at the moment. Waiting outside for so long must have been very difficult for him, to say nothing of the noises he must have heard. She wondered whether Hiko-san had needed to restrain him.

Or Kenshin, for that matter.

“Would you like to say hello to your new nephew?” she murmured. 

“Oh, right.” Enishi pulled back. “There’s a baby.”

Kenshin had settled back down next to Tomoe. The baby still slumbered in his arms, and Enishi shuffled over on his knees to look down at him.

He scrunched his face up. “He’s squishy.”

“Apparently so am I,” Kenshin replied.

Enishi glanced at him. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Tomoe felt that irresistible weight dragging her eyelids down again. She murmured something that she hoped would sound like “I’m just going to close my eyes for a little while,” but probably never got that far before toppling off into a deep sleep.

…  
...

Hiko made the trip back down the mountain with Onba-san and her assistant at a far more leisurely pace than he’d gone up with them the previous night. He also refrained from ferrying the stout older woman on his back, though he carried the bulky tansu chest over one shoulder. He supposed it would count as training of a sort, even if it seemed to weigh less than his cloak.

“A week from today, remember,” Onba-san reminded him as they parted ways at the outskirts of the village and he handed over a few coins as payment. 

Her assistant seemed on the verge of saying something as well, but appeared to think better of it, reddening somewhat as she hurried off. 

He returned to the house to find Tomoe asleep in Kenshin’s futon, her own having been wadded up and hastily shoved out of the way the previous night. Enishi was crouched beside the hearth, shoveling ochazuke into his mouth like a starving man - or, more accurately, like a ten-year-old child - and Kenshin was sitting cross-legged on the floor with an astounded look on his face and a sleeping baby in his arms.

“Sinking in, is it?” he asked wryly as he pulled off his boots and sat down beside his apprentice.

“Apparently I’m squishy.” Kenshin sounded dazed. “And so is he, though Onba-san said he’ll plump up in time.”

“None of us got dressed today,” Enishi said through a mouthful of ochazuke. “You realize that?”

“I’m still in my sleeping yukata,” Hiko replied.

He turned and looked down at the infant sleeping in Kenshin’s lap. A light fuzz of red hair adorned the baby’s head, and Hiko found himself surprised.

When he’d first taken Kenshin in, he’d imagined the boy’s hair to simply have been bloodstained from the ordeal he’d undergone at the hands of the bandits. Then, after he’d scrubbed the boy clean from head to foot and the hair had stubbornly failed to unredden, he’d hypothesized that the unusual color had been the result of the malnutrition he’d clearly suffered over years of living as the child of peasant farmers. But here was Kenshin’s own son, neither malnourished nor maltreated, sporting hair the same outlandish color as his father’s.

“He’s going to be every bit as recognizable as you,” Hiko offered dryly.

Kenshin cringed visibly at that. “I know.”

“Oh, stop.” Hiko stopped just short of whacking his idiot apprentice on the back of the head. “You’re the only person I know who would be upset that his own son looks like him. Would you be overjoyed if he looked like someone else?”

Enishi barely looked up from the ochazuke. “How would that happen?”

“It wouldn’t,” Kenshin said immediately, before Hiko could say anything. He ran tentative fingers through the baby’s fuzz of hair. “I thought maybe he’d look like my wife.”

“Who knows?” Hiko shrugged, a small smile stealing across his face. “Perhaps he’ll get her height instead of yours.”

“Perhaps,” Kenshin murmured, trailing his fingers gently down the baby’s face. 

The baby.

Hiko could barely fit the idea inside his head. Kenshin had run away from his apprenticeship at fourteen, joined a rebel insurgency as a hitokiri only a few weeks later, hastily married at fifteen, and become a father a month shy of his sixteenth birthday.

He looked down at the miniature person in his apprentice’s lap - this tiny human being who would be absolutely dependent upon the people around him for his very survival for many years to come - and wondered how in the world Kenshin or his wife were ever going to manage.

The answer, of course, was that they would require help. His help, he thought with a deep and long-suffering sigh.

“I’m not going to be responsible for cleaning him up when he messes himself,” he muttered.

…  
...

That first night, the baby’s sudden, high-pitched cries startled Kenshin out of sleep (against the wall once again, as he hadn’t laundered Tomoe’s futon yet). He froze stupidly, baby still in his arms and uncertain of what to even do with him, until Tomoe reached out and murmured a sleepy:

“Give him to me.”

It took a few tries, but she got the baby settled at her breast, which quieted him down immediately.

“Those things are loud,” Enishi muttered, before drifting back to sleep. 

The next few days were a strange and wondrous blur.

Kenshin took the time to carefully and methodically wash Tomoe’s stained futon and sleeping yukata. He was quite adept at washing out bloodstains, even in larger quantities, and he had long since grown inured to the sight of blood (again, even in larger quantities), but this felt different.

It wasn’t until he was cleaning out the bathtub just as carefully that it hit him. 

This was his _wife’s_ blood, shed because she had nearly died in the very natural act of birthing their son. She had been doing what women were meant to do, and it had nearly killed her. 

Onba-san said they would likely have no other children. He could live with that, easily, if it meant Tomoe could _live._

They had a _son._

Carefully he refilled the tub and returned to the house.

Confined to her futon, Tomoe seemed to take great pleasure in directing either Kenshin or Hiko in cooking meals worth eating.

“No, turn the fish over and then add the daikon,” she called as Hiko hastily took his hands away from the fish. “And you can add the sesame seeds to the rice pot now.”

“Why is cooking a meal suddenly such precise and grueling work?” Hiko muttered to Kenshin, just as he entered the house.

“Cooking a _good_ meal is.” Kenshin stepped out of his zori and seated himself next to Tomoe. “Besides, Shishou, I thought you said anything worth doing is worth doing perfectly?”

The baby was having his evening meal, and Kenshin reached out and ran his fingers gently through his son’s soft red hair.

“Anything worth doing _is_ worth doing perfectly,” Hiko groused, looking back to Tomoe for approval as he finished seasoning the fish and rice. She nodded, and he went back to work. “I just never thought I’d be the one doing this particular task.”

“You never mastered cooking.” Kenshin kept his expression blandly neutral. “Think of this as a world of opportunity.”

Enishi snorted from where he was once again grudgingly working on his calligraphy at Tomoe’s insistence. 

“Neither did you.” Hiko set the lid back on the rice pot with a clank and glared stonily at both Kenshin and Enishi. “And yet, somehow, you’re still worse at it than I am.”

“Don’t let the fish sit too long on one side,” Tomoe admonished lightly.

“I’m a kitchen servant,” Hiko grumbled loudly as he turned to attend to the fish. “In my own kitchen.”

Still, it looked as though he hid a smile as he did so.

On the morning of the baby’s Oshichiya Meimeishiki, Hiko went down to the village to purchase the necessary auspicious ingredients to celebrate the baby’s first seven days of life. Meanwhile, Kenshin walked up to the shrine, where the miko helped him pick out a scroll delicately hand-painted with cranes for the formal naming ceremony.

That evening, as Hiko complained loudly over the preparation of sea bream and red bean rice, Kenshin laid the scroll out and painstakingly, in his most careful calligraphy, wrote down the name he and Tomoe had decided on.

“Are you specifically choosing things I haven’t the slightest idea how to prepare?” Hiko griped as Tomoe patiently directed him, step by painstaking step, through the preparation of the delicate fish. Enishi stood close beside him, keeping an absurdly close watch on the gently-bubbling pot of rice.

“This is the traditional food for the baby’s naming ceremony,” she replied with infinite patience. Turning back to Kenshin’s equally painstaking work, she added, “Don’t forget to put the birthdate as well.”

Kenshin didn’t take his eyes off the scroll. His brushstrokes had never been particularly good (or even legible, as his shishou had occasionally reminded him), but his son deserved his best work. 

Slowly he added the birthdate down the left side of the scroll, and was actually fairly pleased with the final result. While it was lacking the swooping flourishes of a scholar or artist’s calligraphy, it was neat and legible.

“Neechan, is this ready yet?” Enishi looked over at his sister. “I can’t tell, and neither can Hiko-san.” He smirked. “And we’re really hungry. Or I am, anyway.”

“You’re always hungry,” Hiko growled in response, peering critically at the fish.

Enishi shrugged. “I’m a growing boy.”

Before long, dinner was ready, and while Hiko and Enishi carefully laid the dishes out in front of Tomoe’s futon, Kenshin carefully pasted the scroll on the wall.

Right next to the haiku he had written all those years ago.

Tomoe beamed at the two carefully-written pieces of paper side by side - a joke from years ago beside a celebration from today. To her left, Hiko stared at the paper with what seemed like a deliberately gruff expression that somehow failed to be entirely convincing.

“An excellent name.” He put a heavy hand on Kenshin’s shoulder as he rejoined the group, then turned to Tomoe. “Your idea?”

“It was both of ours,” she replied, still smiling. “He’s our first and only son, and he deserves a name that will always tell him who he is.”

Kenshin felt a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. They had discussed several possibilities for names, but they had come back to this one over and over again.

Himura Kenichi.

Their _son._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> *cracks knuckles* Here comes a bunch of historical context for you crazy kids who like that sorta thing in this story. 
> 
> So blue ginseng was mainly used as an abortifacient. However, in traumatic labors, it was also used to try to force the baby out as quickly as possible, once it became obvious that the mother was in danger. Definitely a last ditch tactic, as blue ginseng could just as easily kill the baby. 
> 
> Yes, Tomoe gave birth squatting. That was just the way things were done and are, in fact, still done in many parts of the world. Instead of laying flat on your back, you get gravity to do some of the work for you! 
> 
> For those familiar with Japanese customs, the chapter title was a spoiler. Oshichiya Meimeishiki is the formal naming ceremony 7 days after a baby's birth. The food that Hiko prepared and the scroll that Kenshin wrote are part of the ceremony. Hiko doesn't keep a butsudan (Buddhist family altar) in his house, so they weren't able to do that part. 
> 
> SO THEY HAVE A SON NOW! There is no way that could possibly complicate the plot, right? *runs away*
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I have a lot of unanswered comments in my inbox. You're all absolutely amazing and leave some of the best, most in-depth, and encouraging comments I've ever received and I love reading and answering them. And I will! It's just been a bit busy lately, so it's taking me longer than usual.
> 
> For the reader who asked: nope, I'm not churning out chapters on a weekly basis. I don't have that stamina. I started writing this story back in November 2019, with the idea that I'd start posting when the new movies dropped. Which got pushed back to May 2021, so I decided to start posting anyway and now have a nice backlog built up to make weekly posting possible. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Your comments and kudos are a HUUUUUGE part of what keeps me posting on a regular basis. Readers in small, old, 90's fandoms are AMAZING. YOU'RE THE BEST! So as always, don't be shy, keep poking me and interacting with me. You can also poke me on the trashfire that is tumblr at frostyemma.


	12. Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kenshin gave the baby a lingering kiss on the top of his fluffy head, then handed him over to Tomoe for his evening meal.
> 
> He did not say anything to Hiko that evening about what was so clearly troubling him. And Hiko, with a sense of unease, didn’t press the issue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Omiyamairi : Shinto ritual on baby’s 30th day of life  
> Hakubaikou : white plum perfume  
> Miko : shrine maiden, usually the priest’s daughter or granddaughter  
> Obasan/Ojisan : polite term for older woman/man  
> Satsuma and Choshu : the domains forming the Ishin Shishi  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Daishou : set of swords, with katana (long) and wakizashi (short)

**Founding year of Keiou  
(June 1865)**

The first time Kenshin gave Kenichi a bath - in a tofu bucket barely filled with water, placed on the wooden floor - it was a heart-rending experience for the both of them. 

Babies - or at least his son - were apparently very slippery, did not like water, and did not particularly care to get clean. New fathers, on the other hand, were nervous about dropping the baby, or somehow letting him drown in barely a shou of water, or damaging the baby in some way, because he seemed so _very_ fragile despite his extremely powerful set of lungs.

“We’re both new at this,” Kenshin told his son after that first disastrous attempt. “We’ll figure it out in time.”

It got a bit easier after that, and easier every day after that, and before long, the household fell into a workable rhythm and routine.

Onba-san and her assistant visited once a week that first month - escorted up and down the mountain by Hiko every time - and after she departed on Tomoe’s thirtieth day of enforced bedrest, Tomoe informed Kenshin that she had been given permission to be up and moving again.

“Which means it’s time to go up to the shrine for our son’s Omiyamairi,” Tomoe said, and Kenshin knew she had spent part of the past month making a special outfit for Kenichi just for the occasion. 

He remembered when he had first taken Tomoe up to the shrine and casually - and without any further thought to it - mentioned that people sometimes went there for Omiyamairi, and now they were bringing their own baby son up there to present him to the gods. 

Life was strange that way.

On the morning of Omiyamairi, Tomoe wore the silk kimono she had worn the night they had fled Kyoto. It had stayed folded in the tansu chest for nearly a year, in favor of the simpler linen kimono she had since made for herself. Kenshin and Enishi, on the other hand, simply aimed for wearing their cleanest, most presentable clothing, though according to Tomoe, there was nothing to be done for Enishi’s lamentable hair. 

Kenshin doubted the gods would mind. 

Tomoe wrapped Kenichi securely to her chest, and within minutes of leaving the house, he had dozed off.

Enishi frowned. “If he sleeps through this whole thing, then what was the point?”

“He’s a month old,” Hiko chuckled, easily keeping ahead of them by several paces. “He’ll sleep through anything.”

His shishou had turned out in fine form. He’d dug into the tansu chest and come out with a bright red kimono, carefully brushed his best hakama, spit-shined his tall black boots until they gleamed, and painstakingly cleaned his cloak. He looked imposing in a way Kenshin had never seen him look before. 

“He doesn’t need to be awake for the gods to give him their blessing,” Tomoe replied. She looked better than she had in weeks, and certainly seemed pleased and relieved to be outside in the warm summer air. “But he’s likely to wake up during the ceremony, at least.”

“Either way,” Kenshin said, “the gods will see him, and that’s what counts.”

Enishi glanced up at him. “So long as we get to eat afterward.”

“Of course,” Kenshin said easily. “Because that’s the most important thing about this day.”

The weather was pleasantly breezy, and Kenshin stepped closer to his wife and son, brushing his fingers through Kenichi’s rooster fuzz of hair before entwining his fingers with Tomoe’s.

“No hakubaikou today?” he murmured.

“I’ve run out of it,” Tomoe said apologetically. “I probably should have been saving it for special occasions, but putting it on was always so much of a habit.”

“It’s a good habit.” Kenshin smiled and squeezed her hand. “I’ll find you some.”

Kenichi did not wake up by the time they reached the shrine. Chiba-san was on hand to welcome them, of course, and the priest and miko began the ceremony without eliciting more from Kenichi than a tiny yawn. Not until the brief ceremony was nearing its end did he wake up, and then only because the priest asked Tomoe to hand him off.

“Traditionally, the baby’s grandmother holds him during this portion of the ceremony,” the iron-haired man said in a low voice.

“He doesn’t have a grandmother,” Tomoe began, but her eyes lit on Hiko and a small smile seemed to flicker in them.

“Here,” she said gently to Kenichi as he stirred, placing him into Hiko’s brawny arms. “Go to Ojiji.”

Kenshin’s eyes widened slightly at that, and he looked over at Hiko but said nothing. Hiko, for his part, glowered at Tomoe but likewise kept his mouth closed.

Kenichi opened large eyes, looked around for a moment, and then apparently decided that Hiko was comfortable enough to sleep on. Another tiny yawn later, he was asleep again, and the priest performed the final blessing. 

With Kenshin’s shishou playing the role of grandfather. 

“Ojiji?” Hiko glowered at Tomoe on the walk back to the house. “Do I look old enough to be anyone’s Ojiji?”

“Enishi doesn’t look old enough to be anyone’s uncle,” Tomoe countered sweetly, Kenichi once again wrapped snugly against her chest. “And yet, there he is.”

“We’re going to eat now, right?” Enishi asked. 

Kenshin glanced at Hiko. His shishou’s eyes were narrowed in his most impressive glare, but Tomoe didn’t wilt under it.

“I’m not calling myself that,” Hiko grumbled. “Not until my hair’s gone as gray as that priest’s, at the very least.”

“My father’s hair has a lot of gray in it,” Enishi supplied helpfully. “And he’s not even fifty yet.”

“I’m only thirty.” Hiko shot Enishi a glare. “And I’m not surprised your father’s hair’s gone gray. He’s had to deal with you, after all.”

Enishi narrowed his eyes. “You’ve had to deal with him.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Kenshin, and Kenshin decided this was a good time to walk on ahead. “So why aren’t you _bald_?”

“You’re only thirty?” Kenshin glanced at them over his shoulder. “You always looked so much older.”

“Probably because I’m a proper size,” Hiko retorted. “Just because you quit growing at five shaku doesn’t mean the rest of us have.”

Kenshin frowned and looked at his wife. She had a small smile on her face, but otherwise seemed content to let the chatter wash over her.

Clearly she was the smartest one there.

...

Over the next few days, Kenshin turned his attention to the garden. 

He harvested a particularly robust crop of daikon radishes, more than Tomoe would be able to use in months, and the cabbages were in healthy abundance as well. They would be able to start pickling for winter right away. He also decided to try his hand at growing kabocha squash, planting seeds that he had traded daikon radishes for in the village. 

He supposed now was a good time to teach Enishi how to pickle vegetables. And eventually he’d do the same for his son.

His _son._

Just as Onba-san had promised, Kenichi had plumped up considerably in the last month. His cheeks were soft and his belly had a delightful roundness to it. Every time Kenshin bathed him, he marveled at the boy’s tiny little fingers and even smaller crescent-moon fingernails. And though Kenshin had borne the same hair color his entire life, he couldn’t help but gaze in wonderment at Kenichi’s rooster fluff of hair.

Just the thought of him warmed his face.

“I’ve finished with the garden for the next few days,” Kenshin said that evening to Tomoe, over a dinner of grilled fish with freshly grated daikon and newly-harvested cabbage stirfried with mirin and soy sauce. “If you like, I can go down to the village tomorrow and see about finding hakubaikou.”

“You’re not likely to find hakubaikou in the village,” Hiko pointed out as he dug into his own meal with gusto. He was clearly enjoying no longer having to cook their food under Tomoe’s direction. “I suppose you can look, but I’d imagine you’ll need to go someplace a touch more cosmopolitan.”

Kenshin nodded. “I can try some of the other villages.”

“If you’re going to spend a whole day looking for perfume, can you at least bring back something interesting, too?” Enishi said through a mouthful of rice. “Like sweets?”

“You’d eat them all in a single afternoon,” Tomoe pointed out, putting a hand on top of Enishi’s head. “But I don’t see why not. As long as Kenshin’s agreeable.”

“Not at all.” Kenshin turned to Hiko. “And would you like anything, Shishou? Keys to a brewery, perhaps?”

Enishi snorted and nearly choked on his rice. Hiko, however, simply rolled his eyes.

“Just the sake, if you don’t mind.” He looked sourly over the rim of his bowl at Kenshin. “Unless you can move the brewery right next to the house.”

Kenshin tried very hard not to smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

...

The next morning, Kenshin kissed his wife on the forehead, kissed the top of his son’s fuzzy little head, and as he was tucking his sword into his belt, Enishi shouted:

“Don’t forget about the sweets!”

“Or the brewery,” Hiko called after him.

Kenshin waved over his shoulder without looking back, then tied the strap of his straw hat securely under his chin. The day was already shaping up to be very hot and sunny, and he had no idea how long he’d be out for.

Hopefully not too long.

As Hiko had predicted, there was no hakubaikou (or even incense) to be had in the village, though the proprietor of the small general goods shop suggested a larger town called Asahicho “about five ri that way.”

A two hour walk then. 

He bought a stick of dango and ate it on the empty road that stretched between villages. At the next village (where there was still no hakubaikou, but it didn’t hurt to check), he ate a stick of grilled eel, and when he passed by a woman selling sliced watermelon on the side of the road, he ate some of that too.

He reminded himself not to run out of money before he even reached Asahicho.

When the sun was highest in the sky - the proprietor having underestimated the distance - Kenshin finally reached Asahicho. The town was quite a bit more populated and bustling than the sleepy village at the foot of Mount Atago, and the obasan who kindly gave him a cup of cooled barley tea directed him to the Hayasaka family.

A girl standing outside the Hayasaka shop bowed him eagerly into it, explaining that the Hayasaka family had been in the business of making perfumes, incenses, and oils for one hundred years. Thankfully, they did have hakubaikou, and Kenshin bought two bottles of it and tucked them into his sleeve. He also inquired about a sake brewery, and while Asahicho didn’t have one, the girl assured him that there was a very good restaurant that sold sake by the jug.

Perfect. 

He ambled over to the restaurant and examined the menu board outside, mentally tallying the money he had left and trying to decide whether or not he could justify a bowl of hot soba with fried tofu, when a whisper drifted to him from off to his right.

“Himura.”

Kenshin froze.

He knew that voice very well, but even so he turned slowly and worked to keep his expression carefully neutral.

“Katsura-san.”

His old superior had lost quite a bit of weight, though his hair was as neat as ever. His clothes were plain, but clean, and he wore a wide-brimmed hat of woven rushes pulled low over his eyes.

A note of wonder and disbelief came into Katsura’s voice. “It really is you, Himura.” 

Kenshin felt his whole world lurch to the side. 

Katsura looked around hesitantly, almost furtively, and raised his voice slightly as he returned his attention to Kenshin. “Please. Come in and eat with me, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Kenshin murmured, and followed him into the restaurant.

The restaurant was buzzing with activity, though Kenshin hardly noticed as he removed his hat, stepped out of his zori, and followed the hostess and Katsura in a near daze.

The hostess directed them to a table in the center of the room, but Katsura shook his head and indicated a table much farther out of the way, in the far corner of the room. The hostess seated them - Katsura sat on the floor cushion against the wall, facing the room - and when she had gone, Katsura leaned across the table and spoke to Kenshin in a low voice.

“Where have you been, Himura?” His eyes flitted around the room, searching for any possible eavesdroppers or threats. Apparently there were none, for his gaze returned to Kenshin in a second or two. “No one could find you. No one knew where you’d gone after -” He hesitated. “After Kyoto.”

“We didn’t go to Otsu.” Kenshin laid his sword down and tried to keep his voice steady - a difficult feat, considering how abruptly his two worlds had smashed into each other. “It didn’t feel right to either of us, and as it turns out, we were correct.”

“We knew you hadn’t gone to Otsu.” Katsura’s face clouded. “But not until after they’d burned the safe house. After that, it was hard to keep track of anything. So many losses…”

He was silent for a moment, and Kenshin let his gaze drift down to the table. With the arrival of the baby, he had allowed himself to block the outside world from his thoughts and focus on his family and his garden and the everyday rhythms they had all fallen into.

Blown away now, like ash.

Before he could speak, the waitress appeared with tea, Katsura told Kenshin to have whatever he liked, and they both ordered the hot soba with fried tofu. 

Once the waitress had bustled off, they both made a show of blowing the steam from the tea before each taking a sip.

Kenshin set the cup down on the table. “We never did find out who the traitor was, did we?”

“No.” Katsura stared down into his cup with hard eyes. “When we were scattered and divided, no one was able to find out a thing. Even now that we’re starting to trickle back together, it’s difficult to know anything for sure.”

Kenshin frowned.

Katsura sighed. “If we’re fortunate, the traitor is dead. But fortune hasn’t been on our side for a very long time.”

“I read about what happened in Choshu.” Kenshin tried to keep the edge out of his voice. “It seems Satsuma are no longer on our side either.”

“War is more complicated than that.” Katsura shook his head. “Saigo Takamori was trying to minimize casualties. The names he provided were only a handful compared to those who escaped during the furor surrounding the executions.” 

The waitress returned with two steaming hot bowls of soba with fried tofu, and they both watched her bustle away before Katsura continued.

“We’ve been in negotiations with Satsuma for more than a week now, trying to get them to rejoin our side.”

“Ah.” 

For the briefest of moments, they both focused on their soba. Kenshin had been hungry before, but now he barely tasted it. 

“You don’t approve.” Katsura laid down his chopsticks and looked at Kenshin levelly across the table. It wasn’t phrased as a question.

Kenshin returned the gaze. “As you said, war complicates things.”

Katsura lifted an eyebrow. “My words aren’t necessarily your thoughts.” 

“My thoughts have never been of particular interest.” The words slid off Kenshin’s tongue before he could reconsider them.

A year away from Kyoto had changed things.

Katsura was silent for a moment, gazing steadily into Kenshin’s eyes. He seemed to be searching for something.

“You know what’s been happening, Himura,” he said finally. “You know how badly things have gone for us since you left. But you don’t know how much worse they’re about to become.”

Kenshin sighed. His chopsticks hovered over the bowl, but after a moment, he set them down.

“War is not the only thing that’s complicated now, Katsura-san.” He took a breath. “Tomoe and I are married. She’s just given me a son.”

Katsura’s eyes widened momentarily.

“I see,” he said after a lengthy pause. “I’d be lying if I said I’d expected as much. Still, congratulations are in order.” He shook his head. “You’re a remarkable man, Himura.”

“My wife is a remarkable woman. And my son is…” A small smile tugged at the corner of Kenshin’s mouth. “Everything.”

Katsura nodded slowly. “I’m happy for you, Himura.” He sighed. “Which makes this even more difficult for me to do.”

Kenshin waited.

“The Bakufu is striking back hard.” Katsura’s eyes turned hard again. “But this time they’ve taken it too far. Our sources say that they’re planning a naval operation against Suo-Oshima in Choshu.”

Katsura’s gaze locked with Kenshin’s.

“It’s a civilian town, Himura. But they’re going to blockade the harbor and bombard it. Shell it until nothing is left. And they’re going to do it on the seventh day of the sixth month.” 

For a brief, stupid second, Kenshin was certain he had misheard him. The Bakufu - and the shogun himself - couldn’t go that far. They couldn’t. That was _insane._ Striking against unarmed civilians was insane.

The sudden anger and _horror_ that gripped Kenshin must have been apparent on his face, because Katsura nodded.

“How-” Kenshin fought to keep the rage out of his voice. “How are they justifying this?”

“They aren’t,” Katsura replied bitterly. “They’re simply going to do it.”

“To neutralize Choshu completely, and to keep Satsuma at heel.” The realization only made Kenshin angrier, and when the second realization struck him, something inside of him burned. “That’s in five days.”

Katsura simply nodded, and Kenshin came to a final awful realization. One that Katsura gave voice to a moment later.

“We can defeat them,” he said with conviction. “But not without unacceptable loss of innocent lives.” He locked eyes with Kenshin. “But if we had you…”

Kenshin’s jaw tightened and he looked away.

He had expected this. He had _planned_ for this, from the very day he and Tomoe had arrived on Mount Atago. He had always known that he could never stand aside and let the world burn if he could do anything to stop it.

And yet.

Now reality was staring him in the face. Now he was being asked to walk willingly back into the conflict, knowing exactly what would be expected of him, knowing that he hadn’t even been away for a full year.

“What would you have me for?” He locked eyes with Katsura. “I can’t go back to my previous… work.”

That had nearly destroyed his soul and driven him insane. He understood that much now. 

Katsura, however, waved a hand dismissively. “No,” he said. “We’ve recently found someone else to handle those assignments. Nowhere close to your skill, of course, but he has an aptitude for the work.”

He took hold of his teacup with both hands, a tendril of steam curling up toward his face. “And besides, what I need you for now is much more overt. Fighting in the open against Bakufu troops, preventing them from destroying this town to cow us into submission - that is what you must do now.”

“In other words,” Kenshin said after a moment, “killing as many as possible. A war of attrition.” 

Katsura’s eyes grew cold and hard. “Not the war we asked for,” he said darkly, “but the war they chose. And now, the war we must win. For the sake of the country. For the sake of the future.” He paused. “And also for the sake of your own wife and son.”

The conversation ended shortly after that. It seemed neither of them had much of an appetite, though before they left the restaurant, Katsura passed him a folded piece of paper. 

“This is where you can find me,” he said simply. “I’m returning to Kyoto tonight. In two days, I am leaving for Choshu.”

Two days.

Kenshin was halfway down the street before he realized he had forgotten to buy the sake. He returned to the restaurant, bought a jug of something the hostess assured him was excellent, and started on the long walk back home.

Only two days.

When he reached the village at the foot of Mount Atago, he remembered that he had promised Enishi sweets. He found a vendor selling steamed manju buns filled with red bean paste, which the ojisan obligingly skewered on a stick for him to carry.

Only two days, and he would leave his wife and his newborn son, because the Bakufu had committed themselves to doing something absolutely unforgivable.

They would die for this.

Many people would die for this. He could either stand by and do nothing while thousands of innocent people were slaughtered or he could commit himself to Katsura-san’s war of attrition and be directly responsible for much of the bloodshed himself.

Damn them.

The scent of grilling fish hit him before he even entered the house with a quiet, “I’m home.”

Tomoe was standing by the stove, tending to the evening meal. Beyond her, on the raised wooden floor, Hiko sat with Kenichi cradled against his massive chest while Enishi sat nearby, biting his lip in concentration as he practiced his kanji.

But all eyes turned to Kenshin as he came in the door. Tomoe greeted him with a rare but beautiful smile. Kenichi turned his head towards him and let out a gurgle of recognition. Hiko nodded and raised Kenichi slightly in his arms. Enishi sprang to his feet at once and hurried over to see what sweets Kenshin had brought.

Something inside him wilted.

Enishi spied the stick of manju buns in Kenshin’s hand immediately. “Are those for me?” 

Kenshin nodded and passed them to the boy.

Enishi tore a huge bite out of one and then took off in a breathless spiel. “Kenichi was crying _forever_ and wouldn’t stop, and Neechan didn’t want to grill fish with a baby tied to her because you shouldn’t put babies near fire, I guess, but of course he really just wanted to be held, so Hiko-san picked him up and was like,” he deepened his voice in a goofy approximation, “‘Listen here, bozu, you stop that nonsense right now.’” 

He took a deep breath. “And he did. He stopped that nonsense right then, and before you knew it, he was asleep.” He took another huge bite of manju bun. “Just like that.”

“Just like that,” Tomoe repeated with a small smile. 

Kenshin tried very hard to hold himself together. He hung his straw hat on a hook by the door, stepped out of his zori, and tucked his sword up in the rafters before kneeling down next to his shishou and his son.

“I brought sake.” He place the jug next to Hiko before running gentle fingers through Kenichi’s fuzzy hair. “And hakubaikou.” He rummaged in his sleeves and set the bottles on the floor. “Two bottles.”

“Oh, Kenshin.” Tomoe smiled at him, a smile that seemed to light up everything around her. “You’re very good to me.” She looked around the room. “To all of us.”

Kenshin sucked in his breath, then held out his arms for his son. “I’ll take him off your hands now, Shishou.”

“He’s fine where he is,” Hiko replied a bit too gruffly, looking down at Kenichi with something disturbingly close to affection. “I think I’ve convinced him to keep still and quiet for a while. We could all use the peace.”

Kenshin glanced at Tomoe, whose smile was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell them that night.

He wanted at least one more peaceful night with them.

…  
...

Hiko knew that something was amiss the moment Kenshin walked in the door. 

After so many years, he couldn’t have said what it was that told him so. A catch in the voice, perhaps, or a certain hesitancy to his apprentice’s motions. Even a hitch of the breath, a flicker of the eyes, or a difference in the way Kenshin stood might have given it away.

But whatever it was, Hiko saw it. Sensed it. And he remained focused on his apprentice throughout the rest of the evening.

Tomoe served dinner, and Hiko ate it one-handed, as he hadn’t passed the baby back. But as they ate, he wondered what had happened to Kenshin down in the village - what had brought on the change he sensed in his apprentice’s very aura.

Whatever it was, he had the sense that it wasn’t going to be a pleasant thing to deal with. For any of them.

Kenshin’s infant son lay securely in his arms, burrowed against his chest in sleep. The fact that the baby was comfortable sleeping against him was only slightly less surprising than the fact that he was comfortable having the baby sleep against him. He wondered how that had happened.

He wondered whether that was the strangest thing that was going to happen that evening.

Kenshin, naturally, did not give anything away during the meal. It had never been his apprentice’s habit to be forthcoming with what was on his mind - not unless he was pushed, and pushed hard.

And somewhere deep in Hiko’s mind pulsed the realization that this time, he wasn’t eager to push. That this time, he didn’t necessarily want to know what had happened to trouble Kenshin. Because this time, it might lead somewhere worse than it had last time.

His arms tightened reflexively around the baby, and only an instant later did he realize he’d done it protectively.

The baby remained asleep against his chest, a tiny but somehow reassuring weight, until he became aware - some time later - of Kenshin reaching out to take him. He must have frowned at that, because Kenshin raised an eyebrow in surprise and said, “It’s time for his evening bath, Shishou.”

He relinquished the baby with a degree of reluctance that was surprising enough to border on alarm, and he watched his apprentice move away toward the wooden tofu bucket that had become Kenichi’s bathtub. 

Soon, the baby’s burbling noises drifted over as Kenshin bathed his son, taking what seemed an inordinate amount of time but clearly relishing it. Hiko caught bits of murmured one-sided conversation as his apprentice talked to his son, finally lifting him from the bucket, wrapping him in a dry blanket, and looking down at him with an expression of contentment that did not entirely seem to settle on his face. 

As if something was lurking in the back of his mind, preventing him from accepting the tranquility of the moment.

Kenshin gave the baby a lingering kiss on the top of his fluffy head, then handed him over to Tomoe for his evening meal.

He did not say anything to Hiko that evening about what was so clearly troubling him. And Hiko, with a sense of unease, didn’t press the issue.

…  
...

The following morning, Tomoe woke with Kenichi’s first squirms of hunger. 

She fed him, cleaned him, changed his diaper and dressed him, and wrapped him in the sling against her body as she rose to make breakfast. Just as she had done on every other morning, and just as she would on every morning to come.

And yet this was not like every other morning. 

Just as the previous evening had not been like every other evening. She felt it as she looked over at Kenshin, still lying in his futon with his eyes closed. Not asleep - she could tell when he was asleep, after so long trying to get him to do more than simply sit with his back against the wall and rest his eyes - but lying there all the same, with something on his mind. 

Something important enough to have damped down his happiness at spending an evening with his family, and something important enough to keep him in bed with his eyes closed in the morning.

A chilly unease fluttered against her ribcage as she contemplated what that might be.

Kenichi squirmed against her as she slipped on her straw zori and stepped into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Last night’s rice had been left in the pot, as always, and it was a simple enough matter to make ochazuke. She looked up at the rafters, where a few dried fish still hung like unpleasant-looking wind chimes. 

Perhaps she could chop one up and mix it in with the rice and tea, for some added salt and protein? And with a few pickled vegetables, it would make a meal both satisfying and flavorful.

She hardly heard Kenshin come up behind her, but his arms snaked gently around her waist, coming to rest against Kenichi.

“I love you,” he murmured into her hair. “And I love our son. So much.”

“Hmm.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, luxuriating in the touch of his lips against the nape of her neck. “I love you. And so does he.”

“He still doesn’t love bathing.” 

Tomoe smiled gently, noting that Kenichi seemed to enjoy his father’s hands clasped beneath him as well. She began chopping the dried fish while Kenshin added:

“But I think he’s learned to tolerate it.”

“As long as he doesn’t turn out to have the same aversion to bathing that his uncle has.” Tomoe didn’t need to look over her shoulder to know that Enishi was sprawled asleep in an undignified position in his futon. 

Her brother had always been something of a handful when it came to domestic responsibilities.

“I didn’t like it much when I was his age,” Kenshin mused. “There was always something more interesting to do.”

Tomoe sensed that a better opportunity was not likely to come.

“And now?” She set down the knife and turned to face her husband, wrapping her arms lightly around his shoulders. Her eyes met his, searching. “Is there something more interesting to do now?”

Kenshin leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “There is nothing more interesting to me than you or our son.”

Snug in his wrap, Kenichi burbled.

Tomoe breathed deeply and took the plunge.

“Then what is it?” she whispered. Her hands caressed the back of Kenshin’s head, burrowing through his unruly hair to his scalp. “Why were you so quiet last evening? What’s troubling you?”

Kenshin sighed. “Was I really so quiet?”

Tomoe’s eyes opened, trying to look into her husband’s, but his were still stubbornly closed. “Quiet enough.” Her fingernails scratched insistently at the back of his head, and she felt him shiver slightly.

Still, he remained quiet.

Finally, slowly, he said, “I had to walk to Asahicho to find your hakubaikou. It’s a town about five or six ri east of the village. So much more bustling than what we usually see.”

Tomoe nodded, eyes widening slightly. She feared for a moment that he was going to tell her that he’d been recognized there. That the town was well-frequented enough that someone had known who he was, and that he’d had to fight for his life in order to get out.

That he had killed again.

Instead, Enishi announced loudly from his futon, “Are you two done being gross? Because I’m really hungry.” 

Tomoe heaved a sigh and glared over at her brother. “In a moment, Enishi.”

“Keep quiet, boy,” came Hiko’s annoyed-sounding voice like rolling thunder across the house. “Some of us are still trying to sleep. In the absence of breakfast, that is.”

The moment was lost.

…  
...

While Tomoe finished putting breakfast together, Kenshin went outside to wash up. 

The weather was warm enough now that washing up at the riverbank was briskly refreshing, and when the oppressive mid-summer heat and humidity came to the mountain, it would become a much needed relief.

He wondered how Kenichi might like his first dip in the river, and for a moment, he indulged in the image of taking his burbling baby son into the water with him. 

That image collided suddenly and sharply with the awful reality that was just over the horizon. His stomach clenched involuntarily, and he thought he might be sick before he managed to take several steadying breaths.

Four days.

The Bakufu would attempt to murder thousands of innocent people in four days. 

When he was certain he could stand without shaking, he headed back toward the house. Tomoe was just setting out the ochazuke around the hearth, where Hiko was muttering to Enishi about not waking the whole damn household just because he was hungry.

If Kenshin sat down and ate breakfast, then tended to his wife and son, and later to his garden, if he forgot that he had ever spoken to Katsura-san, forgot everything he had learned yesterday-

-then thousands of innocent people would die while he had stood by and done _nothing._

He sat down at the hearth, murmured a quiet word of appreciation for the food, and then poked at it with a spoon while Enishi dug into his own bowl like a starving man.

Tomoe watched him with a pensive expression.

Kenshin stared into bowl, then set it down and took a breath. “I met Katsura-san in Asahicho.” He looked at his wife. “It was not a planned meeting.”

Tomoe paled. Her spoon hung limp in her hand, and her eyes fixed on his with a pleading sort of stare.

He could do nothing to comfort her right then. 

“The Bakufu have decided to bombard Suo-Oshima in Choshu. It’s a port town. A civilian town.” He fisted his hands into the fabric of his sleeping yukata. “They’re going to blockade the harbor and shell the town until there’s nothing left.”

Enishi lowered his bowl, eyes wide.

“Until there’s no one left.” Kenshin could not keep the bitterness out of his tone.

“War makes monsters of men,” Hiko spat. A look of deep-seated anger, caustic and hard, had fixed itself on his face, and his voice had turned cold and venomous. “A few hundred innocent lives become trivial in the face of losing power.”

“Thousands of innocent lives.” Kenshin clenched his hands so tightly, the nails dug into his palms. “Not hundreds. Thousands.”

“How?” Enishi said quietly. “How can they do that?” He looked back and forth from Kenshin to Tomoe before settling on Hiko. “Our father, he’s a retainer to the shogun. Is he part of this? Is he _doing_ this?”

“Your father?” Hiko laughed - a single, bitter, barking scoff that made everyone wince with its acidity. “He’s a record-keeper, you told me. A caretaker of dusty old books and scrolls. A glorified librarian.” He shook his head. “He probably has no idea what’s going to happen.”

Enishi frowned.

Tomoe looked as though she were about to be sick. Kenichi stirred restlessly, seeming to sense that something was wrong.

“You’re going back.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and the look in her eyes threatened to break Kenshin’s resolve along with his heart. “To the Ishin Shishi. To the war.”

“Thousands of innocent people are going to die.” Kenshin’s hands shook. He fought to quell them. “For _nothing._ They’re going to die for _nothing._ ”

“Not for nothing.” Hiko’s voice was even and harsh, his disgust evident in every syllable. “For power.”

Kenshin shook his head. “I can’t-” He pressed his nails into the flesh of his palms until it _hurt._ Anything to stop the trembling. “I can’t let that happen.”

Tomoe’s face seemed to crumple like a piece of rice paper tossed into a fire. “When?” she asked in a hollow, broken voice.

“Four days.” Kenshin closed his eyes. Steeled himself. “They’re going to shell the town in four days.”

“Which means you’re leaving tonight,” Hiko said. The bitter edge seemed to have bled out of his voice, to be replaced by a sort of regretful resignation. 

“Yes,” Kenshin said quietly.

…  
...

It was ironic in the most terrible of ways, Hiko mused as he sat there by the hearth and watched the scene unfold.

He had trained and prepared Kenshin for seven years to do one thing and do it well. He had lived his own life steeped in the same action, so much so that it had sunk his mind and soul deeply into a dark mist of resentment at the world and the ever-increasing depravity of those who populated it. He had argued bitterly with Kenshin to keep him out of a war he’d thrown himself into regardless, and he had sworn that this time he would do everything in his power to prevent Kenshin from ever going back.

And yet he was about to watch his idiot apprentice - who in this one instance had proven himself to be, if not less of an idiot, then at least an idiot with a true and compassionate heart - walk away yet again into the very same war.

Kenshin’s experiences in the battleground that was Kyoto had scarred his face and his mind. His sleep had been troubled, his wife’s life very nearly destroyed, and his conscience bent beneath the weight of the uncounted lives he had taken. He had come close to dying the night of the great Kyoto fire, and the nameless traitor still lurked in the shadows. 

How much worse things would have been had he remained there longer than a year’s time, no one could say.

How much worse things would be for him this time, Hiko could only imagine.

Beside him, Tomoe looked down into her lap. Not quickly enough, though, to hide the tears that had begun to brim over in her eyes.

He would not let himself look away from the sight. 

He forced himself to look at the girl’s sadness, her anticipatory grief, because he knew that he had the power to stop it in its tracks. All he would have to do would be to stand in Kenshin’s way as he had failed to do last time - as he had told himself he would do if the need ever arose again. He could simply prevent Kenshin from leaving, and Tomoe would not have to watch her life crumble.

But he knew that he would not.

This time, there was more at stake than the grand and nebulous ideals of teahouse radicals. There was a greater issue than lofty and unclear proclamations about improving the lot of the common folk or bringing the country into the modern age to take its rightful place among the other nations. 

This time, the Bakufu intended to massacre thousands of its own people - innocent people, unsuspecting, powerless and defenseless; old and young, men, women, and children alike - in order to cow the rebellion into submission.

This time, Kenshin would fight a just fight. And Hiko could not bring himself to stand in his apprentice’s way.

…  
...

Tomoe’s vision had gone hot and blurry, and the momentary silence seemed to stretch out and spiral into infinity. The walls of the house seemed to close in around her, caging her in, and it had all happened so suddenly.

Kenshin was going to leave.

A shifting in her lap sent a cold terror through her as she realized that Kenichi was still slung against her. Kenshin was not only going to leave her, but her son as well.

_Their_ son.

She cradled Kenichi against her, curling in on herself, and thought absurdly of times not long past. Times when her life had been joyful and times when her world had been shattered, and yet she had been unable to show the slightest outward sign of emotion at either situation. When she had simply sat, motionless and expressionless, as her life changed for better or for worse, while those who had known her and her family had whispered darkly about it and believed she would not hear.

But now, she could not stop the tears.

“You’re leaving tonight?” Enishi said loudly, and Tomoe looked up to see her brother’s face twisted in a mask of anger.

Whatever Kenshin’s reply was, Tomoe didn’t hear it over the sudden crash. Enishi had thrown his ochazuke bowl across the room.

“I hate you!” He was on his feet then, rage betrayed by the tears pooling in his eyes. “I hate you, _Battousai_ , I hate you! I’ve always hated you!”

Before Tomoe could make herself do or say anything, Enishi clattered off the wooden floor and ran out of the house without even stopping to put his zori on.

For a long moment, no one said anything, then Kenshin rose to his feet.

“I’ll clean it up,” he said quietly.

Hiko got to his feet a moment later and silently strode out of the house after her brother. And then it was just the three of them.

“He doesn’t mean it,” she whispered, head bowed again. Her hands twisted in the fabric of Kenichi’s sling. “He’s just…”

She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence. Enishi had had plenty to be angry about in his life, but the past few months had shown a remarkable change in him. And now, it was as though it had all been wiped away.

Silently Kenshin picked up the pieces of the bowl, deposited them in an empty bucket, and then cleaned up the ochazuke that had splattered against the floor and the wall before rejoining Tomoe.

“I love you,” he murmured. “I love our son. That will never change.”

She felt her throat swell shut. She wished she could have brought herself to say the words that sprang to her mind at that moment: _Then stay._

_Stay here with me. Stay here with our son so that he can know his father as more than vague impressions and old stories. Stay here with the bitter-voiced but good-hearted man who’s been as good as your father since you were seven years old. Stay here with my brother so that he doesn’t have to be so angry anymore. Stay here with the family we’ve made together, and let’s just try to find some happiness in a world that gives it out so rarely._

But she couldn’t.

“I know,” she whispered in a voice that trembled and broke. “And I know you have to go.”

Slowly he leaned forward until their foreheads touched. He cupped her face and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.

“If the Bakufu is allowed to murder thousands of innocent people, then there will be no stopping them.” He said the words quietly, yet firmly. “No one will ever be allowed to live in peace. Including us.” He took a breath. “Including our son.”

“I know,” she said again, tears spilling down her face. “I know all that.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t make this any easier.”

Terrible thoughts swirled around in her head.

“What if you die?” she whispered, eyes wide and unfocused. “What if you’re gone for years? What if the things you have to do destroy your heart and your mind, the way they almost did before? And even if none of that happens, what if nothing you do is enough to win the war?”

He pulled back slightly and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Then I still have to try. So long as I have the power to do anything, then I still have to try.”

“I know,” she said yet again, wishing she did not. 

It was agony to know her husband so well, to know that his compassionate heart would not permit him to leave innocents to such a terrible fate, and yet to also know the terrible emptiness he would leave behind him.

“You have to come back to me,” she said hollowly, tears falling freely to land with gentle taps on Kenichi’s sling. She took a deep, shuddering breath and continued.

She could not bear the loss of a second love. It would kill her; she knew it.

“Hiko-san says that Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is invincible.” She forced her streaming eyes to look into her husband’s. “Is it? Will you swear to use it to come home to me? To us?”

Again, he leaned his forehead against hers. His fingers curled into her hair, unbound and loose about her shoulders. 

“I will always come back to you,” he murmured. “So long as I’m able, I will always come back to you.”

…  
...

A black pallor hung over the little time they had left together.

While Tomoe bathed, Kenshin stood outside the bath shed, holding Kenichi against his chest. He breathed in the warm, baby scent of him and dropped the occasional kiss atop his fuzzy little head.

He didn’t know when he would get to do that again.

When it was his turn to bathe, he took his hair down and washed himself carefully and deliberately, then spent some time soaking in the tub.

He didn’t know when he would next have time to linger.

As Tomoe watched silently, he unpacked his old clothing from the tansu chest. He had meticulously scrubbed them clean of blood when they had first arrived on Mount Atago last summer.

He didn’t want to think about how soon he would need to do so again.

She continued to watch as he dug out his half-sleeve bracers - still in good condition - and her expression only wavered slightly when he took his daisho down from the rafters.

He would probably need the wakizashi again, after all.

“I’ve written a letter to my father in Edo,” Tomoe said softly, from behind him.

He snapped the wakizashi back into its sheath and turned to face her. She held out an envelope, an unfamiliar name brushed in Tomoe’s familiar hand - _Yukishiro Takeshi._

“I don’t know when you’ll get the chance,” she whispered, “but maybe one of your message runners can get it to him, and then…” She took a slightly shaky breath. “Then he won’t have to wonder whether my brother and I are alive.”

“Of course.” He took the letter and tucked it safely inside his kimono. 

He would find a way to send it as soon as he got to Kyoto. Katsura-san owed him that much, at least.

“Kenshin.” Tomoe’s voice was quiet, slightly tremulous, but insistent. “One last thing.”

A light scarf of blue-white silk - her favorite one - was in her trembling hands. “Keep this with you,” she whispered, her eyes beginning to fill with tears again. “Perhaps it will bring you luck, or perhaps it will just help you remember how much I love you.”

She reached up and, feather-light, placed it around his neck.

He had no idea how long he stood there with his arms wrapped around her, their baby cradled between them, but at some point, he had to force himself to pull away.

“I love you,” he murmured. “I love our son. And I’ll always come back to the both of you.”

He kissed her, gently at first and then more fiercely. He ran his fingertips through his son’s fuzz of hair and then kissed his little baby head. And then somehow - he had no idea how - he forced himself to walk out of the house.

Enishi and Hiko sat on the stumps aside, though as soon as Kenshin slid the door shut behind him, Enishi looked over at him, red-eyed and angry.

Before Kenshin could say a word, the boy stood up and ran into the forest.

“He seems to have gotten somewhat attached to you.” Hiko stood slowly and turned to look at him, his face hard. “The gods only know why.”

Kenshin’s gaze drifted toward the forest. “I hadn’t realized.”

Perhaps they had just become used to each other. Enishi had proven to be good, though not quite efficient, company while fishing or gardening. And he was a fast learner.

He didn’t know when he would see him again, either.

“Of course you hadn’t,” Hiko snorted. “You’re an idiot.”

Familiar words. 

“So you’ve said.” 

He could handle that much. At least this time, they weren’t parting ways after ugly arguments and recriminations. 

“I should go then.” He gave a small bow and started toward the edge of the clearing.

“Wait.” Hiko’s voice was as commanding as ever, and Kenshin stopped and turned to face his shishou once more.

“Remember everything I’ve taught you,” Hiko said as he looked into Kenshin’s eyes with the full intensity of his swordsman’s gaze. A humorless smile crossed his face. “It might save your foolish life and prevent that girl from dying of a broken heart.”

There was too much to say right then, and Kenshin didn’t know how to say any of it. It would be impossible to express all of it in the little time he had, and he had never been overly-talkative to begin with.

He bowed again, much deeper this time. “Thank you, Shishou.”

Before he could allow himself to change his mind, he turned and forced himself to walk away. It would be a day’s walk to Kyoto, and he wanted to stop in the village first.

After all, he would need to have his swords sharpened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Okay y'all, this chapter took forever to edit, but here it is and it's still Sunday, so we're on time. Lots of plot development, so I'm OH SO EAGER to hear what you have to say. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Yes, the Bakufu's plans to straight out murder an entire civilian town was a thing they called the Second Choshu Expedition. It was in the OAV end credits, where Kenshin storms a ship and kills a bunch of mooks while Takasugi (the shamisen guy with tuberculosis) watches from his horse (and then coughs up blood and dies, whatever, I still love you, Takasugi). More importantly, you can see a quick glimpse of the ships attempting to shell a port city.
> 
> No, Tomoe's father's canonical name is not Yukishiro Takeshi. He was never given a name past Oibore/Geezer, and uh... I've decided he deserves a real name. What he's actually up to remains to be seen though, doesn't it?
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Anyway, y'all know the drill by now. Your comments, in all of their encouraging, amazing, sunshine-y glory, are what keeps me posting week after week, so lay them on me. You can also come say hi on tumblr @frostyemma.


	13. Choshu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conflict could not be permitted to last a decade. The country wouldn’t survive such an assault.
> 
> Kenshin didn’t think he’d survive it either.
> 
> In a bamboo forest littered with fresh corpses, he realized his first marital anniversary had come and gone with no fanfare or even recognition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Satsuma and Choshu : the domains that formed the Ishin Shishi alliance  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Tabi : split-toe socks  
> Seiza : the traditional, formal way of sitting on the knees  
> Shimabara : Kyoto’s red light district  
> Tokaido : walking road linking Kyoto and Edo  
> Onmitsu : ninja spies and assassins  
> Terakoya : temple school, taught by samurai or Buddhist priests, required for the children of samurai, especially in the major cities

**Founding year of Keiou  
(June-September 1865)**

A sword hissed through the air a hand’s breadth away from his shoulder. Another swept over his head. A third buried itself into the mast where his stomach had been a split second beforehand.

Kenshin dodged, twisted, spun, leapt. His sword flashed a dozen times in half as many seconds, and men fell to their knees in his wake, gripping opened bellies, gurgling through opened throats, eyes staring in shocked surprise at nothing at all.

The pitching and tossing of the ship beneath his feet had made his enemies even less surefooted than usual, and he used it to his advantage as he used everything else. The masts could be dodged around or jumped off of. The rigging above could entangle careless blades and provide him an even higher place to leap from. The narrow space meant that the sheer weight of his enemies would push some men screaming into the sea. One man had looked into his eyes and seen the death awaiting him there, turned, and hurled himself headlong over the side and into the night-black water. 

And all the while, his thoughts were on the other ships. The other men who had been dispatched to prevent the bombardment. Their success would mean life, their failure death, for the innocent and unsuspecting people of Suo-Oshima. 

But he had heard no cannon fire yet. And there would be none from the ship on which he now stood.

Before long, it was all over. Smoke wafted past him from somewhere. The deck beneath his feet was slippery with blood that ran like water across the boards and out through the holes in the ship’s sides at deck level. The bodies of more than two dozen men lay strewn about the ship. 

He fought the urge to reach inside his kimono to touch Tomoe’s scarf. Tried to find another way to remind himself that he was still alive.

His thoughts flitted briefly to his wife’s smile, to his son’s round face and fluff of red hair. They were safe. Protected. Perhaps their separation would only last so long.

The ground war in Choshu broke out less than twenty-four hours later.

…  
...

A week on, Tomoe had not yet adjusted to her husband’s absence.

The house felt curiously empty without him, even though he had always spent most of his time out of doors. The garden felt abandoned, even though Hiko-san and Enishi began to take it in turns to look after it. And in the evenings, when the task of bathing Kenichi now fell to her, she felt Kenshin’s absence as though it were a physical hole in her chest.

Enishi had not dealt with Kenshin’s departure well. 

Either he would storm off on his own for hours only to return and sulk moodily by the hearth, or he would sit beside her silently all day and refuse to move more than an arm’s length away, or he would latch himself onto Hiko-san in an obvious attempt to distract himself.

Hiko-san, for his part, had taken Enishi in his stride. 

On the days when Enishi would not let him be, he answered all of her brother’s incessant questions - if not with patience, then with a withering sort of tolerance. And on the days when Enishi stomped out into the woods, he would remain outside to keep watch over him. She believed that Hiko-san had an almost supernatural sense of what transpired on the mountain, and that he would not allow any harm to come to Enishi while he was off on his own.

And for her, there was Kenichi. A small part of Kenshin that reminded her of how much she loved and sorely missed her husband.

…  
...

The summer was hot and hellish.

The Bakufu, abandoning any pretense of concern for the welfare of its own people, trained all of its forces on overwhelming Choshu completely by both land and sea. 

“Hold the island,” Katsura had said. “We need to hold the island until Takasugi brings the fleet.”

There were only so many of them though, not so much holding the island as trapped on it, against what seemed like an endless supply of Bakufu soldiers.

Kenshin kept his swords sharp, his hands far from idle, and his mind blank. 

He lost count of the bodies and he lost track of the time, but if that was the only way to hold the island - and to hold onto himself - then so be it.

The fleet did come. The numbers of dead were uncountable. 

The Ishin Shishi planned an ambush in Aki. Kenshin lost track of the details. The details never really mattered. 

“The ambush will only work if you can hold the bridge though,” Iizuka had said. “And there are at least fifty men on that bridge.”

He didn’t count the number of men. It was better to never count the number of men. Madness waited down that path. 

Blood soaked into the straw of his zori, soaked into the soles of his tabi. He would wash it out later. Better not to think too hard on it.

The bridge sagged under the weight of the dead. Blood spilled into the river below, staining the water, staining the rocks, staining everything.

He held the bridge.

In mid-summer, the war crossed over onto the mainland.

…  
...

Hiko stood, his hands filthy, and watched Enishi haul determinedly at the stem of a daikon radish. Beside him, three woven baskets sat piled with the cabbages, carrots, and other daikon they had already pulled up.

“Put your back into it, boy,” he said, turning to look out at the mountainside.

After so many years of watching Kenshin tend the garden, he knew roughly when each crop ought to be harvested. Just as he knew that soon, it would be time to plant the yams that would be ready for a fall harvest. 

“I really don’t understand how he finds any of this fun,” Enishi grunted, giving a final tug on the stem of the daikon. He nearly fell backwards into the dirt with the effort of it, but the radish came loose.

“Neither do I.” Hiko turned back to the boy. “But at the very least, it’s decent exercise for you.”

It was true. For all Enishi’s limitless energy, he had remarkably little muscle. Hiko blamed it largely on his soft city samurai upbringing, but he supposed that his weeks of starvation and wandering might have had something to do with it as well.

At any rate, the boy would benefit from real out-of-doors work. Both physically and spiritually.

“He never did manage to stray too far from his roots,” Hiko mused. “Comes of being born on a farm, I suppose.”

Enishi snorted. “He strayed pretty far. Otherwise he’d be here, managing his own stupid garden instead of leaving us to do it for him.”

Hiko grimaced. 

It wasn’t easy to be reminded of how he’d let Kenshin go again after he’d sworn up and down that he would never repeat his mistake. Nor of how deeply his idiot apprentice’s absence had affected them all. Enishi’s moods were still raw and unpredictable, and a perceptible melancholy seemed to glaze Tomoe’s every waking moment. 

Hiko did not dwell on his own feelings about Kenshin’s departure.

Still, it had only been a handful of weeks. In time, things would develop a new equilibrium. They would all become used to Kenshin not being there, and his absence would not be such a sore point. 

For any of them.

“Perhaps leaving it in your hands wouldn’t be a bad idea.” Hiko brushed dirt off of his hands. “A bit of added responsibility is just the thing for a boy your age.”

“Says you.” Enishi slapped the dirt off the radish and tossed it into the basket, then glared balefully at the row of radish stems that awaited him.

Under his breath, he muttered, “I hope he never comes back.”

Hiko rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.”

“Yeah, I do,” the boy said through gritted teeth, hands wrapped around the stem of another radish. 

“Because of how positive an outcome that will be for your sister, no doubt.” Hiko barely held back a snort. “Not to mention your nephew. Yes, growing up without a father would do wonders for him, I’m sure.”

“I barely know my own father.” Enishi pulled harder at the stem, nearly growling with exertion, but the radish seemed stuck fast in the ground. “And I’m fine.” 

Part of the stem ripped from the radish, sending Enishi tumbling backwards into the dirt. 

“Dammit!” He hurled the offending stem away and slammed his hands into the ground. “I hate this! I hate _him!_ ” His eyes reddened and he wiped infectually at them, smearing dirt across his face. “I hate all of this!”

“You hate that he’s gone,” Hiko corrected him stonily. “Either that, or you were doing a wonderful job of pretending not to hate him for all those months he was here.”

“Stop pretending you know anything!” Enishi shouted. He pressed his filthy palms against his eyes. “You don’t know anything!”

Hiko simply waited.

The boy’s anger seemed limitless, and there was an almost frightening intensity to it - something surprising to find in a boy Enishi’s age. Anger that severe would be rooted too deeply to eradicate, and attempting to placate or blunt it would simply cause it to turn inward and give birth to a lifelong, undefeatable foe - the most deadly the boy would ever know.

Channeling it, then, was the only option.

When the boy finally wore himself out, he lay prone on the ground, panting and flushed, face streaked with wet dirt.

“I hate him.” His fingers scrabbled uselessly at the ground. “I hate him so much.”

“Tell me why.” Hiko crouched beside Enishi.

Enishi looked at him. “What?”

“You heard me.” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “I said, tell me why you hate him. Be specific.”

“What…” Enishi pushed himself up on his knees. “What kind of question is that?”

“Apparently one too complicated for you to answer.” Hiko snorted. “Perhaps I should have started by asking you your favorite color. Then we could have worked our way up to the important questions in a year or so.”

Enishi glowered at him, then after a moment, shook his head and climbed to his feet. “Let’s just…” He wrapped his hands around the mangled radish stem once more. “Let’s just finish this stupid garden.”

Hiko knew that it would not be enough for the boy to simply burn off extra energy by pulling stubborn radishes. In time - and not a very long time either - he would need a more constant and reliable means of directing his intense emotions toward something productive. He would need a central, driving force in his life; something to which he could commit himself entirely and which would consume that energy which threatened to boil over now.

And Hiko would have to find it for him.

…  
...

The heat of mid-summer wore into the intolerable humidity of late-summer.

Breaking the Bakufu’s stranglehold on Choshu meant unrelenting onslaught against their increasingly desperate forces.

“A wounded animal in its death throes lashes out with desperate strength,” Katsura said gravely to the assembled group of his closest comrades one evening. “But even as it does so, it dies. Never forget that.”

He looked directly at Kenshin. “We may have already dealt the fatal blow. What follows may simply be a protracted death struggle. But whether the end comes in a month, or a year, or a decade, we will win.”

The conflict could not be permitted to last a decade. The country wouldn’t survive such an assault.

Kenshin didn’t think he’d survive it either.

In a bamboo forest littered with fresh corpses, he realized his first marital anniversary had come and gone with no fanfare or even recognition.

While he covered his ears to wait out the ambush of cannon fire in a shrine that should have never been used for such things, he had the fleeting thought that his son would be three months old now.

As he cut through enemy forces that would have made an example of an entire village, he didn’t count the numbers. He could never count that many dead.

Better to never count.

They would break the Bakufu’s stranglehold on Choshu, or it would all come to nothing.

…  
...

Silence had settled around the hearth like a thick winter blanket.

Hiko-san sat cross-legged beside the low fire, Kenichi sleeping in one massive arm. He cradled the baby effortlessly against his chest while eating one-handed. His eyes stared into the fire, his expression unchanging even when he set down his chopsticks and picked up his sake cup.

Enishi sat on his knees, seiza-fashion, and gazed sullenly at the flames. He’d set aside his long-empty bowl and seemed to be looking for something in the flickering shapes made by the fire. 

Answers, perhaps? 

Tomoe could not have said. She had looked for answers herself, but found only the constantly-changing and enigmatic shapes of the flames. The sight was enthralling, enticing, but ultimately meaningless, and she had abandoned gazing into the fire for gazing around it instead. 

She wondered absently whether her father had received the letter yet. Whether it had been a comfort to him, or whether he had been in any condition to be comforted by it any longer. A chill that the summer heat and the proximity of the hearth could do nothing to chase away seized her at that thought, and she quickly cast about for something else, anything else, to think about.

Enishi sighed. “I wish you weren’t so sad all the time, Neechan.”

She looked over at her brother, the hint of a melancholy smile tugging at the corners of her eyes. “And I wish you weren’t so angry all the time, Enishi.” She sighed. “But it’s for the same reason.”

“Doubtful.” Enishi scowled, then glanced over at Kenichi. “It’d be a lot easier to be a dumb baby though. He doesn’t know anything.”

“He’s not dumb.” Tomoe reached over and, feather-lightly, stroked the soft fluff of hair on Kenichi’s head. 

Hair the same shade as his father’s.

“I just wish we’d heard something by now,” she murmured. “It’s horrible not to hear anything. Not to know…”

“It’s better that we haven’t heard anything, really.” Hiko-san refilled his sake cup with one hand, replacing the cork in the jug and turning to face her without disturbing Kenichi. “If the Ishin Shishi are winning, the Bakufu won’t want the news getting out. There will only be news if it’s bad news.”

She tried to feel better at that, but it was not an easy thing to accomplish.

Several expressions flitted across Enishi’s face, and for a moment, Tomoe feared he might explode into anger. 

Instead, he said, “But we’re not hearing _anything_ in the village. It’s like nothing is happening at all.”

“Precisely.” Hiko-san took what, for him, was a small sip of sake. “Information is a powerful thing in wartime. The sentiment and popular support of the people is vital, and the Bakufu know they won’t have it for themselves. So by stifling any news of victory, they’re discouraging the people from either trying to find ways to support the Ishin Shishi or else rising up en masse themselves.”

Enishi didn’t look convinced. “You think people are going to support the Ishin Shishi?”

“Only if they feel that they have a better than average chance of winning.” Hiko-san scowled. “People are cowards, after all.”

“Not everyone has the benefit of an invincible style of swordsmanship to protect themselves.” Tomoe surprised herself by speaking. “They’re peasants armed with rocks or farm tools. They can’t be expected to stand up bravely against warriors.”

Enishi’s eyes widened and he shot Tomoe an appreciative glance.

“There might have been a time for that sort of thinking before the country broke out into open warfare, when it might have been understandable for peasants to cower rather than provoke.”

Hiko-san, surprisingly, did not storm or rage at her. 

Indeed, he seemed to be looking at her with a greater degree of respect. 

“But that time is past,” he continued. “If the Bakufu had succeeded in shelling Suo-Oshima, the people there would have died regardless of their convictions. And the next atrocity they try to commit will be every bit as indiscriminate, if not more.”

“But we don’t even _know_ if they shelled Suo-Oshima or not!” Enishi slapped his hand against the floor in obvious frustration. “We don’t know _anything!_ ” He made a _‘tsk’_ of disgust. “How did you even deal with this the last time he abandoned you?”

Now it was Tomoe’s turn to gaze wide-eyed at her brother’s audacity.

“With sake and anger, for the most part.” Hiko turned sour eyes on Enishi. “But last time was different. He left then because he wanted to. This time, he left because he needed to.”

He drained his sake cup without moving his eyes from Enishi. “And we know they didn’t succeed in shelling Suo-Oshima because he was there. A Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman is powerful enough to turn the tide of any battle to the favor of the side on which he fights.”

Enishi scowled and went back to staring moodily into the fire.

For as much as Hiko-san seemed to enjoy disparaging Kenshin, Tomoe thought with surprising reassurance, he seemed supremely confident in his abilities. And if Hiko-san was so sure that Kenshin was still alive and doing well, then she would do her best to feel the same.

…  
...

In the brutal midday humidity of the eighth month, the fields of Shijuhassaka stank with the corpses of the newly dead. 

The blood had dried brown in the packed dirt, and there were so many bodies - and in some cases, fragments of bodies torn apart by British-bought cannons - it was impossible to identify most of them. Or even identify which side they had fought on.

There was no time to bury them, or cremate them, or mourn them. Kenshin let himself believe, had to let himself believe, that the people in the surrounding villages of Choshu would take care of that.

They pressed on. 

Rumors that reached the ears of commoners and soldiers alike started to swirl: that Satsuma had set aside their feud with Choshu and had allied once more, with the full backing and support of the British.

They pushed their way through Choshu, driving the Bakufu back and further back, and slowly, steadily winnowing their numbers body after body after body.

It was the war of attrition that Katsura had promised. 

The rumors proved true when the Satsuma Ishin Shishi - and their modern British weaponry - joined them in Ono. It was there, with every explosion of the cannons, every clash of steel on steel, and every man - uncountable, always uncountable - that Kenshin cut down mid-battle that they finally broke the back of the Bakufu’s forces in Choshu.

The Bakufu retreated to Hiroshima.

Two days later, they declared open warfare against all enemies of the Shogun.

“The death throes of the beast,” Katsura said yet again.

It had become his new favorite metaphor, and it never seemed to fail to inspire new recruits. Or to stoke the guttering fires of those on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.

“Himura.” Katsura stood before him, his face aged with care but his eyes still shining with the fervor of their cause. “It’s time for you to return to Kyoto.”

Kenshin sat on the floor in some Choshu samurai’s house or another. He couldn’t remember whose, and he didn’t much care. It didn’t matter anyway.

He glanced up at Katsura with tired eyes. “This wasn’t enough attrition for you?”

The surprise showed on Katsura’s face, along with some pain. “If I had my way, Himura, no more attrition would be necessary.” He sighed. “But until the Bakufu admits defeat and the new government takes power, there will always be more work to be done.”

Kenshin closed his eyes and let his fingers curl around the hem of Tomoe’s scarf. “The same work?” he heard himself say. 

“Until the war is won,” Katsura replied again.

Two months. 

It had only been two months. He could last a little bit longer. They were so close, after all. They had to be.

He nodded once. “Fine.”

“You’ve got more lives than a sack of cats, Himura.” Iizuka sidled up to them, his ever-present half-smile in place. “How did you manage to hang on so long in Ono? That deserves a drink, if nothing else.” He held out a saucer of sake to Kenshin.

Katsura nodded to Kenshin and moved away toward a knot of other men.

“It’ll be good to get back to Kyoto, won’t it?” Iizuka asked, pouring a saucer for himself and sitting down next to Kenshin. 

Kenshin glanced at him. “Why is that?”

“Oh, you know.” Iizuka looked slyly at Kenshin over the rim of his sake saucer. “Old familiar places and all that. Good memories and happy times.”

“Yes, I know you made many happy memories in Shimabara.” Kenshin took a sip of the sake; it didn’t taste like much. “I’m sure the women there miss your coin very much.”

Iizuka laughed heartily at that, tossing back his sake. “Ah, I’ve missed you, Himura,” he said, shaking his head mirthfully. “Even if you never managed to learn that the best women are the ones who don’t feel the need to stick around after the deed’s done.”

A year or so ago, Kenshin might’ve choked on his sake at that comment before either reacting in anger or indignation. But quite a bit had changed in a year, and instead he kept his fingers curled around the hem of Tomoe’s scarf.

“If you say so.” He tipped the rest of the sake back and placed the empty saucer on the floor. 

Iizuka refilled it and shook his head regretfully. “But you’re a married man now. So I suppose I’ll have to enjoy all of that for you.”

Kenshin took another sip of the tasteless sake and let his gaze wander over the room. Katsura was talking with a Satsuma samurai named Okubo Toshimichi; now that Choshu and Satsuma had once again formed an alliance, the two would be working very closely together.

He highly doubted they were discussing brothels.

“So long as Shimabara’s been rebuilt,” he murmured, “I’m sure you’ll get all the enjoyment you’re hoping for.”

“Well, speaking of your wedded bliss,” Iizuka offered in a low, conspiratorial voice, “that letter you asked me to send on for you ought to have arrived by now.”

Kenshin nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

He had given it to Iizuka the night he had arrived in Kyoto, and Iizuka had passed it on to a runner who wouldn’t be traveling with them to Choshu. But with both the instability in the country and the increased scrutiny on the Tokaido, Iizuka had warned that it could take anywhere from several weeks to even a few months for the letter to arrive safely.

“I suppose you’re still not going to tell me what was in it?” Iizuka raised his eyebrow, his half-smile still, as always, in place.

Kenshin shook his head. “My wife wrote the letter.” A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Even a year on, referring to Tomoe as his wife warmed him. “And it wasn’t written to me.”

Iizuka simply smiled. “Well, at least she wasn’t writing to a secret lover.”

Kenshin was suddenly very tired of the whole conversation. Abruptly he drained off the last of sake, set the cup down, and climbed to his feet.

“It’s a long walk to Kyoto,” he explained. “I’m going to find a place to sleep.”

He’d have several sleepless nights soon enough.

…  
…  
…  
…  
…  
…  
…  
…

**Interlude**

The news had come from the informant at the end of the sixth month. 

Battousai’s _wife_ \- and Tatsumi felt white-hot anger at the thought of that treacherous, heartless little bitch - had sent a letter on to her father in Edo. And while she hadn’t been thoughtful enough to write down the name of the place in which she was hiding, the letter had included some very useful bits of information.

First, the fact that her equally traitorous brat of a younger brother hadn’t managed to succumb to his wounds or even starve to death properly, but had crawled like a rat back to his sister’s side. The pair of them were in hiding together.

And second, that since Battousai had gone back to the rebels and there would be no one to protect either of them, the Yaminobu would be afforded an excellent opportunity to lure Battousai into a fatal trap. A trap which, incidentally, could also be used to punish the boy and his sister for their unforgivable treachery.

Especially since - and this was a bit of news that had not been in the letter, but which the informant had been only too happy to share - the girl had recently given birth to Battousai’s child.

That news had sent an even hotter spike of rage through Tatsumi. The girl who had offered to provide them with the means to destroy Battousai had not only fallen for him, not only betrayed her word and her family and her country by siding with him, but had allowed him to sire a son on her. 

Tatsumi flexed his fingers and imagined wringing her neck like a chicken’s. Perhaps after she watched the Yaminobu cut Battousai down, after she watched them cut out her brother’s traitorous heart and fling her bastard son over a cliff, then he would allow her to die. But very slowly, and very painfully.

Women’s capacity for treachery was eclipsed only by their capacity for stupidity...

The informant, of course, had read the letter before sending it on and had repeated its contents verbatim. But Tatsumi was interested in more than what the words of the letter had to say. And so, once the word had come that the letter had been delivered, he and the rest of the Yaminobu had set out for Edo.

It was a simple matter of waiting for the housekeeper to leave for the evening - the last thing any of them wanted was the screaming of a terrified woman bringing the entire neighborhood out to investigate - and then making their move. Nakajou and Sumita waited in the shadows just outside the doorway from the street. Mumyoui would be atop the roof, though no one - not even Tatsumi - would see him go there. 

And so, alone, Tatsumi silently slipped into the house. 

The old man was seated on his knees on the floor before his writing desk, the letter spread out before him, staring down at it hungrily through a pair of spectacles as though reading its words would keep him from starving to death. Though his black and gray kimono and hakama were neat and crisply folded and his long hair - densely shot through with gray amid the glossy black - was immaculately tied back at the crown of his head, he looked older than his years. Frail, worn and aged by his losses.

“You’ve had a letter, old man,” Tatsumi growled.

Yukishiro started at that, then placed a hand over the letter before shifting slightly to face Tatsumi. His eyes widened for a moment before he schooled his expression into something more blandly neutral. 

“My housekeeper,” he said carefully, “didn’t tell me I was to have company.”

Tatsumi’s brows knit. “I’m the sort of man who doesn’t like to be announced.” He cracked his knuckles in a volley of loud snaps. “Do you know who I am, Yukishiro Takeshi?”

Yukishiro’s gaze strayed to Tatsumi’s hands before returning to his eyes. “I must apologize for my ignorance, but I’m afraid I do not.”

Useless city samurai.

Good for nothing but eating the rice that was won by the blood of real men, all the while commanding respect far above the level earned by his skills. Tatsumi wondered when Yukishiro had last drawn his sword for any reason other than to clean it.

“My name,” he growled, “is Tatsumi. I lead the Yaminobu.” He watched Yukishiro’s eyes hungrily for the first hint of recognition. Of fear. “You know who the Yaminobu are, surely.”

Yukishiro’s expression remained irritatingly bland, though his fingers tightened ever so slightly over the letter on the desk.

“The shogun’s personal onmitsu.” He bowed his head. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Spare me.” Tatsumi’s eyes narrowed. 

He was beginning to understand where the girl had gotten her coolly-aloof demeanor from. Her father, too, had a manner of speech and behavior that seemed to invite a physical beating. 

“I want the letter, Yukishiro, and I want it now.”

That finally got the first flicker of emotion from the man. His eyebrows raised in surprise before he seemed to remember himself and adjusted his expression back to dull politeness.

“My daughter’s writing is hardly noteworthy,” he said quietly. “Merely correspondence to her unworthy father.”

All the same, he carefully, almost reverently, took the letter and slid it across the tatami mat.

Tatsumi crouched down and took it with two fingers, his eyes never leaving Yukishiro’s, and tapped it lightly against his right thigh. There was more to it than the words, as he knew. The paper, the ink, the very scent of it might give them clues to where it had come from. But there might be an easier way than that.

“Your daughter failed to fulfill her end of a bargain she initiated with us.” Tatsumi’s eyes were mere slits. “Do you know where she went when she left you? Where she is now?”

The old man folded his hands in his lap, and while his expression might have remained aloof, his eyes flickered with pain.

“No,” he murmured. “I do not.”

Tatsumi looked at him appraisingly for a long moment, searching for the telltale signs of the lie. A flicker of the eyes, a twitch of the mouth, a slight hunching of the shoulders - anything that would authorize the pain which would never fail to wrench the truth from even the most stubborn-willed of resisters. 

But it never came.

“No,” Tatsumi said at long last. “No, I don’t believe you do.”

Useless old fool.

“Your son.” Tatsumi spoke the words sharply, relishing the old man’s barely-mastered start at his abrupt loudness. “He followed in your daughter’s footsteps. Both figuratively and literally. If I were to look for him, where might I go?”

Yukishiro took a breath. 

“My son,” he said slowly and carefully, though Tatsumi could sense real anger just below the surface, “was taken on his way home from terakoya.” His fingers twitched in his lap. “All I have been told is that he’s serving the Bakufu now.”

“And who told you that, old man?” Tatsumi spat. He held up the letter. “Not this. And this is truer than anything some slack-jawed tale bearer might have told you.”

“Am I incorrect then?” Yukishiro’s expression didn’t change. “My son was not taken in service of the Bakufu for an errand I’m not privileged to know?”

Tatsumi’s hand shot out and fastened around the old man’s neck. Not to kill him - though it would have been simplicity itself to do it; Tatsumi had crushed stones between his fists before and the old man’s neck was as thin as a deer’s - but to terrify him. To let him feel real fear, so that he might be tempted to be a little more forthcoming. 

And respectful.

“Your son,” he hissed, as Yukishiro’s hands pried uselessly at Tatsumi’s fingers, “is holed up with your daughter somewhere. They’ve both abandoned their duties to the shogun and the Bakufu, and in all likelihood, they’re working for the rebels now.” 

“My daughter-” The old man choked the words out. “My daughter wouldn’t-”

“Your daughter ran off somewhere into the wilderness when she should have been helping us to hunt down and destroy the rebels’ most dangerous hitokiri.” He glared at Yukishiro, bringing his face closer to the old man’s gasping, choking visage. He leaned forward in his crouch, his fingers tightening slightly, enjoying the strangled sound it dragged from Yukishiro’s throat.

“If you know where they are, old man, and you don’t tell me, your loyalty comes into question as well.”

“Her fiance-” There was real fear in the old man’s eyes now, and Tatsumi relished the sight of it. “Her fiance was killed by-”

“I know that, you old fool.” With a single motion, Tatsumi relinquished his hold on Yukishiro’s throat and shoved him backwards. The old man sprawled on his rump, undignified, his haughty manner nowhere to be seen. “What I want to know is where she is now.”

“Our family-” Yukishiro rolled to his side and gasped for air, struggling to compose himself. “Our family has served the Tokugawa Bakufu faithfully for over one hundred years. Our loyalty-” He gave another shuddering gasp. “Our loyalty has never been in question.”

“This is war.” Tatsumi got to his feet smoothly and unhurriedly, his baleful gaze never leaving Yukishiro’s face. “Everything can be questioned at such a time.”

A wolfish smile spread slowly across his face as he reached up with the hand still clutching the traitorous girl’s letter, holding the folded paper high above his head. And, as he knew it would, a look of horror seized the old man’s face.

An arm, inhumanly long and thin, its cadaverous fingers tipped by glinting steel talons of razor sharpness, reached down spider-like from the ceiling. Delicately and deliberately, the talons plucked the letter from Tatsumi’s hand.

“You never knew Mumyoui was there, did you?” Tatsumi relished the look of primitive terror in Yukishiro’s eyes, the colorlessness of his lined face. “And you never will.”

He turned on his heel and stalked out of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Welp, you wanted the Yaminobu, and HEEEERE THEY ARE! 
> 
> Tatsumi is the asshole with the long white hair. Mumyoui is the Venom-looking dude. (I wish I were joking about that, but I'm not.) He's more prominent in the manga, where Watsuki very cheerfully ~~ripped off~~ paid homage to a variety of Marvel characters, but in the OAV, you only see him briefly as... a claw. Nakajou and Sumita are the darts guy and the axe guy respectively, and yeah, I only remember who is who by looking them up, because they had no personalities past being a darts guy and an axe guy.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Also, in case you forgot, Takasugi Shinsaku (the guy Katsura said would bring the fleet) was the founder of the Kiheitai, the volunteer militia that accepted men from all social classes and backgrounds. He's also our favorite, tubercular, shamisen-strumming badass. (I don't care what they say about you, Takasugi baby, I'll always love you.)
> 
> The part where Kenshin "holds" the bridge I took directly from a deleted scene in the end credits of the OAV. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> To answer a reader's question, most of my characterization and plot references come from the manga, not the OAV. (Because, uh, Kenshin and Tomoe are very flat characters in the OAV.) But damn if the OAV didn't have some incredible (and brutal) imagery and scenes, along with some really inspiring music. I have a love/hate relationship with the OAV. It was the very first bit of Ruroken I ever got my hands on and it tells a really solid stand-alone story. But it didn't really do much for Kenshin and Tomoe as actual, well-rounded characters, and Hiko is particularly awful. Solid characterization, for me, comes from the manga.
> 
> NOTE THE FOURTH  
> As always, come talk to me, swirl wine at me, and wail at me. It keeps me going and is very inspiring. You can also poke me on tumblr at frostyemma.


	14. Signs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Drink this.” He held out the cup to Enishi. “It won’t cure you, but it’ll get you moving again. And then you can tell me what happened.”
> 
> Enishi brought the cup to his lips with trembling hands, took an experimental sip, and made an exquisitely disgusted face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS - skimpy one today  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Andon lantern : paper-sided oil lantern  
> Hakubaikou : white plum perfume

**Founding year of Keiou  
(October 1865)**

It was going to be a glorious day, mused Hiko as he folded his futon. All the signs were there.

There was a hint of sharp autumn crispness in the air. The sky was achingly blue, which was thrown into strong relief by scattered clouds of impossible fluffy whiteness. The leaves were in the middle of turning, and the entire mountain had become a riotous blaze of red, yellow, and gold as far as he could see in every direction. Even the stream seemed clearer, its chattering louder and more distinct than it had been in weeks.

Or perhaps that was the sound of the baby banging his rattle repeatedly against an upturned tofu bucket.

Kenichi had learned to sit up of his own volition in the past few weeks, and had even begun to make some tentative moves towards crawling - reaching out with his tiny hands and supporting his upper body without moving his legs, exploring the small circle around him without changing the location of its center. He’d also learned to make sounds, both with his own mouth and with anything he could pick up and manipulate. 

Including the rattle Tomoe had made for him out of old chestnut shells threaded on a string and tied to the end of a smooth bit of bamboo.

“Kaachan hears you.” Tomoe stood at the stove, stirring the morning’s rice porridge. She had switched to making rice porridge for breakfast instead of ochazuke a week prior, when she decided it was time for Kenichi to start his first foods. “In a moment, we’ll have breakfast.”

Kenichi squealed and banged harder on the tofu bucket.

Enishi sat cross-legged on the floor next to him, chin propped in his hand. “When he starts crawling, Neechan, you’ll never be able to turn your back on him again.”

“I haven’t turned my back on him since he started threatening to crawl.” Hiko chuckled. “If only because I don’t want to be looking the wrong way when he decides to start.”

Enishi smirked. “Because he’ll crawl right over the edge of the floor.” 

“Just like you did,” Tomoe said calmly, without turning around. 

A moment later, Tomoe situated the porridge bowls around the hearth. Enishi grabbed Kenichi before he could plunge his entire fist into one of the bowls.

“I’d say to just let him do it and allow him to learn from his mistakes,” Hiko snorted as he began to eat his own breakfast. “But he’s his father’s son, and I wouldn’t count on him learning until after at least five or ten attempts.”

Enishi snorted and dug into his own porridge.

Tomoe either didn’t hear or pretended not to. She placed Kenichi onto her lap and turned her attention to the messy business of trying to get any food into the baby at all.

It struck Hiko, as he sat there eating his porridge, that his house had become a home to far more people than he had ever imagined it would. That his idiot apprentice had gathered a family to him, and that the family remained even while he was gone.

And, strangest of all, that Hiko found he didn’t mind.

Kenichi burbled a mouthful of porridge down his chin. Tomoe very patiently mopped it up and tried again.

“Babies are so gross,” Enishi snickered over his own heaping mouthful of porridge.

Tomoe didn’t even blink at that. “So were you.” She brought the spoon to Kenichi’s lips again and managed to keep some of the porridge in him this time.

“Today feels like a good day for that trip down into the village.” Hiko finished his porridge and set the bowl down. “It shouldn’t take me long. I expect I’ll be back not too long into the afternoon.”

Tomoe set the spoon down. “I thought you might say that.”

“Because it’s laundry day,” Enishi said.

“Yes.” Tomoe pulled a shopping list from her sleeve and slid it across the floor to Hiko.

“When you get better at hauling heavy things up the mountain than you are at helping with the wash, then you can be the one who goes to the village on laundry day.” Hiko picked up the list and clapped a heavy hand on Enishi’s shoulder. “But until then, your role is what it is.”

Enishi scowled. “You never made Kenshin stay behind to do laundry.”

“No,” Hiko agreed as he pulled on his boots, thrust his sword into his belt, and swirled his cloak around his shoulders. “He volunteered.”

...

The walk down to the village was every bit as pleasant as the beautiful morning had suggested it would be. 

Birds called to one another over his head as he strode with sure-footed steps down the familiar pathways that led down the mountainside. Rustling here and there in the undergrowth were animals stuffing and gorging on the last berries and seeds of the year, preparing themselves for their long winter’s sleep. The gentle breeze that blew his hair over his shoulders and tugged at the hem of his cloak smelled sharp and clean, that particular scent that only autumn had. 

He found himself walking more slowly, so as to properly take it all in.

The shopping took him hardly any time at all, and in truth, he found the village far less compelling on that fine autumn day than the fields and forests outside it. And so, in what felt like only a very short while, he was heading towards the end of the main road of the village, carrying pole slung over his shoulder, filled baskets swaying gently back and forth, and a new sake jug dangling from the fingers of his left hand.

A broadsheet pinned to the village’s public notice board caught his eye as he was about to pass it. He stopped, read, and frowned.

_Wanted Dead or Alive! Traitor to the Bakufu and the nation, Hitokiri Battousai once again active in Kyoto! Red hair, seven shaku tall, a bloodthirsty demon in the flesh!_

_1 RYO REWARD FOR HIS CAPTURE OR HIS HEAD!_

Hiko shook his head in disgust. Seven shaku tall? Their descriptions of his idiot apprentice were getting less accurate all the time…

“Looking to get the reward?” An old man chewing on a stick of dango sidled up next to him. “That would be quite a bit of money for anyone ‘round here.”

Hiko snorted, not bothering to turn his head. “Anyone who thinks a single ryo is worth his life deserves the fate he meets.”

“That’s a year’s worth of rice right there. Nothing to sneeze at.” The old man chomped noisily on his snack. “They say he can fly though.” He mimed it with the stick of dango. “They say he can run right up the side of a building and then fly.”

Hiko shook his head. It was typical of lesser men to witness feats of great skill and mistake them for sorcery. He’d hammered the idea home to his idiot apprentice nearly as often as his favorite maxim about a sword being a weapon. Any bizarre power or ability that an adversary appeared to have was bound to be either a particularly well-honed skill or else an elaborately contrived charade meant to throw an opponent off-balance.

“Then I suppose they had better offer a higher reward.” Hiko finally turned his head to regard the man. “If they expect anyone to go up against a seven-shaku-tall flying demon.”

The old man nodded. “If the Shinsengumi don’t get him first.” He polished off the last of the dango and slid the empty stick into his sleeve. “Lot of rumors coming out of Kyoto now. I hear they’ve put all ten units on him. The streets aren’t safe for any man.”

Hiko fixed the old man with a stony, unblinking gaze. “The Shinsengumi least of all, if they’re hunting him.”

...

The walk back up the mountain took less time than he’d originally planned. His thoughts of a leisurely stroll to enjoy the autumn ambiance had been eclipsed by his desire to get back to the house to inform Tomoe and Enishi of the bounty now on Kenshin’s head. 

He smiled. Enishi, at least, ought to find it amusing…

Within earshot of the house, he realized that it was abnormally quiet, as though the forest had turned to cotton and absorbed the low susurrus that normally permeated the woods.

Tension rising in his chest, he quickened his pace.

The house looked deserted when he entered the clearing. Not a bird or a squirrel disturbed the perfect stillness, and the only sound was the soft rushing of the stream behind the house. 

He set the carrying pole and the jug down silently on the ground and, with his hand hovering near the hilt of his sword, moved just as silently towards the house.

A quick look inside showed him that the house was empty, with no sign of a struggle or anything out of the ordinary. But out by the stream, scattered across the ground, he found the abandoned laundry.

And Enishi, sprawled facedown and unmoving.

There was no sign of Tomoe or the baby.

Hiko was by Enishi’s side in an instant, rolling him gently over onto his back. Blood oozed from split skin on his cheekbone, where he had clearly been struck a hard blow, and from both nostrils as well. His eyes were half-open, rolled back into his head so that only the whites showed, and for a horrible split-second, Hiko believed that the boy was dead.

Clenching his jaw so tightly that his teeth creaked in their sockets, Hiko plucked a blade of grass and held it under the boy’s nose. An eternity seemed to pass before it fluttered slightly, and Hiko found that he could breathe again.

Enishi was alive. 

Barely so, and unconscious in the most disturbing of ways. But the fact that he was warm and breathing - albeit shallowly - caused a wave of dizzying relief to crash into Hiko. And as he checked Enishi for further injuries, his fingers ran over a tiny dart sticking out from the boy’s left shoulder.

Poison.

Swearing loudly, he pulled the dart loose and examined it closely. It was a simple bo-shuriken - a thin spike of metal with a tuft of animal hair on its blunt end and a needle-sharp point on the other. A sniff at the thing’s sharp end revealed the sweet scent of poppy juice with the underlying bitterness of thorny apple.

Hiko swore again. 

A powerful sedative combined with an equally powerful hallucinogen. So the poison had not been meant to kill him, but rather to incapacitate him for a number of hours. Whoever had attacked him and taken Tomoe and Kenichi - and Hiko had a strong suspicion about who they were - had clearly intended to use Enishi’s condition to slow any possible pursuit.

Well, he had no choice but to play that game. At least for now.

...

The sun had dipped close to the horizon. 

The boy lay in his futon inside the house, a cool damp cloth on his forehead and Hiko sitting close beside him. Ever so often, Hiko would check the boy’s vitals and then re-soak the cloth in a bucket of cold water before replacing it on his brow. And his sword was never more than a few bu away from his hand at any given time.

Time passed minute by gut-wrenching minute, but the boy did not stir. Occasionally he cried out in a broken and rasping voice, mostly nonsense words, but sometimes his sister’s name.

The sun slipped beneath the horizon.

Hiko lit the andon lantern and waited, while the sky darkened and the stars emerged and the moon glowed. He waited while the owls hooted softly and the foxes crept silently through the underbrush. He waited while the first gray light before dawn sent the stars into hiding again. He waited through the violent pink and orange sunrise that woke the mountain from its sleep while the boy slept fitfully on.

And never once did he leave the boy’s side.

...

It was past midday before Enishi awoke.

At first, all Hiko saw was a slight flutter of the boy’s eyelids. Then, a trembling of his left hand. A moment later, Enishi opened his eyes and started violently.

“Neechan?” he rasped, and abruptly sat up in his futon before crying out in pain and dropping his head in his hands. “Neechan…”

“She’s alive.” Hiko held out a hand to steady the boy. “And you’re lucky to be.”

“We don’t know that.” The boy balled his fists and pushed them against his eyes. His whole body shuddered. “You don’t know them. You don’t know what they’re like.”

Hiko didn’t bother to ask who ‘they’ were; it was clear from the boy’s reaction that it had been just as he’d feared - the Yaminobu had come after the pair of them.

“If they’d wanted to kill her,” he snapped, “I’d have come back and found her dead.” 

Enishi moaned. 

Hiko reached over and poured a cup of tea from the pot he’d brewed while the boy lay unconscious. He’d added a few herbs to the tea that wouldn’t improve its flavor, but might serve to take the edge off the aftereffects of the poison. At least, for long enough to get them underway.

“Drink this.” He held out the cup to Enishi. “It won’t cure you, but it’ll get you moving again. And then you can tell me what happened.”

Enishi brought the cup to his lips with trembling hands, took an experimental sip, and made an exquisitely disgusted face.

“We were doing the laundry. And then they were just… there.” Another shaking sip. “We didn’t hear them coming. I tried… I tried to stop them, but…” He stared into the cup, his expression a mixture of disgust and anger. “Clearly I didn’t do that.”

“Stop that.” Hiko glared sourly at him. “Drink the tea and stop berating yourself. You couldn’t have done a thing to stop them, but you can help me find your sister and bring her home.”

“The last thing I heard them say…” Enishi continued to glare down into the cup. “They said… They said they were going to throw Kenichi over a cliff.” His shoulders shook. “And then they laughed.”

Hiko was reminded forcibly in those few words of everything that was wrong with the country, the world, and humanity itself.

“They laughed,” the boy said again. 

Men were callous and cruel, often for the very sake of the cruelty itself. These Yaminobu were no exception, gleefully tormenting the boy while planning to murder a baby for no other reason than it might cause suffering to others. Mankind was like a diseased tree, rotting away from within while appearing outwardly whole.

And every time he had ever tried to set that to rights using Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, he had failed. He had failed to destroy the source of that impulse, that urge in the deepest parts of man’s soul that prompted such atrocities and rejoiced in the suffering they engendered. He had failed to do anything more than punish the guilty.

Would this time be any different?

He had to try.

“You worked for them.” Hiko’s voice was a low growl. “You can tell me where to find them. Where would they take them?”

Enishi whipped his head up to glare at him. “I don’t know that! Why would I know that? You think they told me anything?”

“I think you were in their company for months.” Hiko glared right back, noting as he did that the boy’s pupils were extremely dilated. The poison was stubborn; he simply had to rely on Enishi being more so. “And I think that of the two of us, you’re the more likely to know where they are because of that. Now, are you going to help me save your sister or not?”

“I don’t know where they are!” Enishi shouted, slamming the cup down against the floor, half its contents sloshing over the rim.

Abruptly he shoved the blanket aside and staggered to his feet, then took a few unsteady steps forward. 

“You think they told me anything? You think as they were…” He gritted his teeth and forced the words out. “Beating me, they told me anything?”

Hiko folded his arms and waited. The boy had become so convinced of his own helplessness that he was making himself become so. Unattended to by his father, beaten and ridiculed by the Yaminobu, he had nearly been broken.

“I don’t know anything!” The boy turned away, breathing heavily, shoulders heaving. “I’ve always been useless.”

There was a way, of course, for the process to be halted. For Enishi to become capable of protecting himself and others, and for him to finally overcome the burden he had placed upon himself. But what would it cost all of them...?

Abruptly Enishi froze. “Unless…”

Hiko snapped back to attention. “Unless?”

“The scary, evil forest,” Enishi whispered, then whirled around and looked at Hiko, excitement in his eyes. “They might’ve taken her to the scary, evil forest!”

Hiko stared at the boy, his face halfway between a glower and a smirk.

“I don’t suppose this forest has a name?” He got to his feet. “Or a location? I don’t especially relish going down to the village to inquire about a ‘scary, evil forest’.”

“It _is_ a scary, evil forest.” Enishi scowled. “They said so.”

“Of course they did.” Hiko rolled his eyes. 

Enishi glowered at him. “They said it has special, Battousai-killing properties.”

“And what properties are those?” Hiko gestured at the boy’s forgotten teacup. “And if you don’t drink that, you’re not going to be able to keep your feet underneath you long enough to be of any use to me or your sister.”

Enishi promptly sat down, picked up the teacup, and drained it, all without breaking eye contact. When he was finished, he set it aside and said:

“Those properties are known only to the Yaminobu.” He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “And I don’t know the name of the forest, but I know it’s right outside of Otsu.”

“Naturally.” Hiko scoffed. “If I never hear about Otsu again after today, I won’t feel as though I’ve lost anything of value.”

The bit about the properties of the forest, though, did give him pause. 

Apart from the physical traps the Yaminobu were sure to have laid for anyone who ventured too close to their base of operations, he wondered what else there might be to contend with. Doing battle on an opponent’s home ground came with risks, and mitigating those risks was what separated master swordsmen from dead swordsmen.

“On your feet, boy.” Hiko thrust his sword into his belt and watched Enishi closely for any signs of unsteadiness or weakness. “You can try to remember more about the forest while we travel.”

…  
...

The streets of Kyoto were a waking nightmare.

Previously, Kenshin had done his work - if one could call it that - under the muted cover of darkness. He had stalked his targets until they turned down empty streets or cramped alleys, and when he struck, the only sounds were the occasional gurgled scream and the heavy thud of lifeless bodies smacking the ground.

It had chipped away at his soul bit by bloody bit and slowly shredded his sanity, but it had been quiet. Until Tomoe, there had been no one to notice that he was drowning at all.

Kyoto under martial law and open warfare was a different sort of horror.

The Ishin Shishi clashed openly with the Shinsengumi and the Bakufu soldiers on any given street now, and on any given night. The streets were filled with the cries of the desperate and the dying, with the sounds of steel clashing against steel or cutting through flesh.

Tomoe had told him once that he had made it rain blood. Now the streets ran with blood, now the buildings and the gates were painted in it, now men gurgled their last breath in the gutters unnoticed because so many others were dead or dying with them.

And now they knew him, too.

The Shinsengumi - and sometimes the Bakufu soldiers - called him out by name (sometimes Himura, usually Battousai, though the captain of the first Shinsengumi unit addressed him as Himura-san on both meetings). They called him out by hair color, by the long scar that marred his cheek. 

On one occasion, a group of soldiers had turned and run once they identified him. He let them go.

No one ran from him that evening.

He clashed with a unit of Shinsengumi (maybe the fifth unit? The sixth? He only recognized a few of the captains, and none of them were present) that seemed desperate for a fight. They announced the style of kenjutsu they practiced, shouted that he would die like a dog in the gutter, and as he rebounded off one wall to transition into a Ryutsuisen, he heard one of them scream not to let him get airborne. 

The blood filled the cracks in the cobblestones.

The unit was a small one. He could count them if he wanted to, but it was best not to count the number of dead. Insanity waited just around the corner, beckoning softly, persistently. 

Best never to count.

Before dawn broke, he dragged himself back to their new safehouse, the Yazuya, and spent a long time washing his hands. He washed his face, dumped a bucket of water over his head, and watched the blood that had spattered against his hakama run rivulets into the floorboards.

He washed his hands again to be certain they were clean.

The innkeeper - nothing like the previous one - gave him a wide berth, but told him curtly that his futon had been laid out (“Not that you seem to use it”), a dinner tray had been prepared for him, and if he would leave his clothes in a bundle outside the door, someone would see to them.

He was so tired.

Quietly he slid the door to his room closed, eased his katana from his belt, and knelt down in front of the dinner tray that waited in the middle of the floor. He was aware of eating soup, rice, some sort of fish, but he didn’t taste any of it.

He thought of Tomoe, of her carefully seasoned food and painstakingly crafted red bean sweets. Of the lingering scent of hakubaikou and the way she slid her arms around him and leaned her head against his.

He thought of Kenichi, his soft fluff of red hair, bathing him in the tofu bucket or cradling him in his arms as he drifted to sleep. He realized he would be five months old now. Unrecognizable, practically.

He thought of his shishou and Enishi, and hoped the boy’s anger had cooled down, hoped they weren’t sniping constantly at each other. 

When he finished his meal, he left the tray in the hallway and then cracked the window in his room. A folded scrap of paper pinned under the futon headrest fluttered in the gentle breeze.

He frowned, freed it from the headrest, and unfolded it.

_We have your wife and son.  
You will surrender yourself to us within three days.  
If you do not, the next thing you find beneath your headrest will be a piece of one of them.  
Come alone to the forest outside Otsu.  
Make your peace with the gods before you do._

He stared frozen at the letter for a stupefied moment before he felt something inside of him go incandescent with rage. The feeling traveled upward from the pit of his stomach until his face burned. 

Whoever they were - and he had a pretty good idea - he would kill them. He would kill them, and he would count every one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> For those who might have missed it, the 1st captain of the Shinsengumi is the exquisitely polite (and apparently adorable, based on any anime/manga I've ever seen him in), Okita Souji. He's the one who addressed Battousai as "Himura-san." In the anime, he's also the one who held up a flower, then crushed it and threw its petals everywhere, before challenging Battousai to a fight, because I guess he was also... flirting with him? Maybe?
> 
> Pictures of the actual guy show him to be way less cute, by the way, so stick to the various anime adaptations. Also, Seta Soujiro was based off Okita, but without the tuberculosis or awkward attempts at hitting on one's enemies.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> You know the drill. Your comments GIVE ME LIIIIIIFE, so keep talking to me. As always, you can also talk to me on the hellsite that is tumblr at frostyemma.


	15. Barriers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had to give him something.
> 
> “You want me to fulfill my end of our bargain,” she said quietly. 
> 
> “Are you even capable of doing that anymore?” Tatsumi snorted derisively. “No. Think harder, girl.” His eyes glinted dangerously. “Think, if you can still do that much. If your brain hasn’t been too addled by your quiet, happy life up on a mountain with that murdering traitor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Onmitsu : ninja spies and assassins  
> Bokutou : wooden training sword  
> Jika-tabi : split-toe boots that look like socks  
> Engawa : Japanese-style porch

**Founding year of Keiou  
(October 1865)**

Tomoe awoke to the feel of a hardwood floor under her back, a steady throbbing behind her eyelids, and her son’s frantic, confused crying. 

That last part made her sit up with a choking gasp, ignoring the pain and the cotton-stuffed confusion in her head, to grope wildly in the dark for Kenichi.

A wave of premature relief washed over her as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of whatever room they were in. Her son sat just out of reach of her outstretched hand, in the pile of fabric that she used to wrap him snugly against her, clinging to the stuffed rabbit she had sewn for him only a few weeks earlier. Fresh tears made wet tracks down his chubby cheeks.

“Kaachan’s here.” She choked back her own terror, forcing a soothing tone of voice as she gathered him in her arms. “Everything’s all right. Kaachan’s here.”

“How touching.”

Tatsumi stood in front of the closed door, his arms folded, a look of mingled pleasure and disgust on his face. Sunlight peeped through the cracks in the door and against the walls, framing him in an unsettling glow.

Tomoe’s arms tightened around Kenichi. “Where are we?”

“That hardly matters, does it?” he snorted. He unfolded his arms, the metal gauntlets he wore glinting in the thin shafts of light from the outside. The steps he took towards her - one, two, three - were unhurried and deliberate, and she couldn’t help but shrink back. “The real question is, why do you imagine you’re here?”

Kenichi fussed against her, and it took her a terrified moment to realize how hungry he must have been. She stroked his hair, clutching his head against her chest.

“So much has changed,” she whispered, hating the way her voice shook. “The whole country is at war now.”

“Nothing has changed.” He looked at her with unconcealed loathing. “So answer me: Why are you and your brat here?” 

Kenichi continued to root desperately against her, and Tatsumi’s gaze fixed dangerously on him. For a sickening moment, Tomoe was terrified he would attempt to snatch him away from her.

She had to give him something.

“You want me to fulfill my end of our bargain,” she said quietly. 

“Are you even capable of doing that anymore?” Tatsumi snorted derisively. “No. Think harder, girl.” His eyes glinted dangerously. “Think, if you can still do that much. If your brain hasn’t been too addled by your quiet, happy life up on a mountain with that murdering traitor.”

Tomoe rocked Kenichi against her chest as he sucked miserably on his little fingers. It wouldn’t be too much longer before he started wailing in hunger.

She swallowed the chunk of ice in her throat and forced herself to speak. Anything to keep Tatsumi’s attention away from her son. “How did you find us?”

“Your little letter to your father.” Tatsumi’s laugh was icy and thoroughly unpleasant. “Mumyoui comes from a mining clan. No one knows the earth like he does. He has a talent for identifying places based on the scent of their earth.” 

He took one more step towards her, his muscled bulk growing more intimidating as the distance between them decreased. “After we’d paid a visit to your father, Mumyoui took the letter from him.” Tatsumi’s smile made her nauseous. “And he swore that your letter positively stank of Mount Atago.”

Her eyes widened. “My father?” 

Her stomach roiled terribly, and for an awful moment, she thought she might be sick. Her own foolishness had put both her brother and now her father in danger, and she had no idea if they were alive or-

_No._

“Oh yes.” Tatsumi saw the terror in her eyes and seemed to drink it down greedily. “We had to question him, of course. Find out how much he knew about his children’s treachery.”

“My brother-” Her voice cracked, throat terribly dry. “He’s just a boy. He was never treacherous.”

“He was useless.” Tatsumi’s smile vanished in an instant, twisted and became an ugly glare. “For all he claimed to want to find you, he couldn’t manage to lead us anywhere. And now -” He scoffed, his long white hair falling over his shoulder as his head twitched to the side. “Now, he’s gone to live with you and Battousai. Traitors seek their own.”

Kenichi sucked harder on his fingers, eyes screwed shut with frustrated hunger. Tomoe stroked his hair and continued to rock him.

“I took him in,” she said quietly. “Blame me, not him. He’s only a child.”

“Oh, I do blame you,” Tatsumi hissed. “I blame you for deserting us, I blame you for betraying your country, I blame you for being a weak-hearted woman who couldn’t even remember her own murdered fiance well enough to keep from becoming his killer’s whore, and I certainly blame you for giving birth to that bastard brat of his.”

Tomoe closed her eyes and took a breath. 

Whether or not Kiyosato-sama forgave her for that betrayal - and part of her hoped that the first man she had ever loved would understand her actions - it wasn’t Kiyosato-sama’s son who sat in her lap now. When the time came for her to explain herself to her first love, she would do so with a whole and honest heart. But until that moment came...

She looked at Tatsumi. “Does he know we’re here?” 

There was no need for her to clarify who _he_ was. 

“Oh yes.” The twisted smile returned to Tatsumi’s face, even if that ugly leer still lurked in his eyes. “He’ll be on his way here now, I expect. But he will never leave, and neither will you.”

Kenichi kicked his tiny feet and thrashed his hands about, opened his mouth, and started to wail.

Tatsumi looked at him with clear disgust, as though he were some slimy thing beneath an upturned stone. “Shut that brat up, or I will.”

“Please.” Tomoe hugged Kenichi tightly. “Please, he’s hungry. Just… just let me feed him.”

Tatsumi’s mouth twisted, and he turned to leave. “Don’t even think about trying to leave this room,” he said without turning to look at her. “You’ll be dead before you can take six steps.”

“He’s only a baby,” Tomoe said quietly. “He’s innocent of all of this.”

“It’s Battousai’s offspring.” Tatsumi didn’t turn around, but the scorn and disgust in his voice made it clear what sort of look would have been on his face. “And if you don’t keep it from making that racket, I’ll pitch it off the first cliff I find.”

He slammed the sliding door behind him.

Tomoe kept fearful eyes on the door for a moment, terrified that Tatsumi would storm back in, wrench Kenichi out of her grasp, and-

_No._

Her mind refused to go down that path, but she knew she would die before she let Tatsumi take him from her. And she also knew that was exactly what would happen if it came to pass.

She loosened her kimono, and a moment later, Kenichi was nursing desperately, leading her to wonder just how long she had been unconscious. 

Or where the Yaminobu had even taken them. 

And if they would still be alive by the time Kenshin found them…

…  
...

“Keep up with me, boy,” Hiko called back over his shoulder. “Don’t start falling behind.”

In truth, he was fairly pleased with how Enishi had managed to keep pace so far, despite the fact that Hiko had slowed his own pace to permit the boy to stay with him and had continued to listen carefully for any signs of struggle or difficulty on the boy’s part. 

But the poison was still in Enishi’s blood, and even the remarkable resilience of a ten-year-old boy only counted for so much in such circumstances.

“Doing the best I can,” Enishi panted. “But I’m wearing straw zori, and you have boots, and a handful of pickles is a lousy snack.”

“Your sister,” Hiko replied levelly. “Remember?”

“I know!” Enishi snapped. “Which is why I didn’t ask if we could stop for actual food!”

It would take a day and a half, perhaps longer, to make it to Otsu. They would need to skirt Kyoto as closely as possible without being foolhardy, and there was still the forest itself to negotiate once they had reached Otsu. 

What was likely to happen in that time was never out of Hiko’s thoughts, but he had to keep the boy from veering off into despair. 

“If you have breath to argue, you have breath to walk faster.” Hiko smirked to himself. The boy’s spirit was praiseworthy. “Or run. It’ll get us there sooner.”

Abruptly Enishi sprinted ahead of him.

Hiko actually laughed. “Now that’s more like it.”

Unfortunately, they did eventually have to stop. Enishi, as Hiko had predicted, reached a point where the vestiges of the poison in his veins brought him to a stop. He sank to his knees and could not move forward another step, and Hiko half-carried him into the brush beside the road to make camp. They spent a fitful night there, Enishi sleeping soundly throughout while Hiko stirred at every noise with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

They marched forward in grim, purposeful silence the next day, until abruptly Enishi asked:

“Do you think Kenshin knows?”

“If he doesn’t know now, he will soon.” Hiko’s boots crunched on the surface of the dirt road, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed. “Either this is some sort of bait to lure him into a trap or it’s the sort of revenge intended to drive him insane.”

And it had better have been the former, he added silently.

“But…” He could practically hear the boy mulling it over in his head. “How would they even know where to find him? How did they know where to find Neechan?”

“Let’s put that at the top of the list of things to ask them when we get there.” Hiko gazed ahead. The forest was drawing nearer, and they would reach its border very shortly.

“Are you really going to ask them anything?” A note of panic crept into Enishi’s voice. “I don’t want to ask them anything. I don’t want to talk to them at all. I want to get Neechan and get out of there.”

“Oh, we will.” Hiko smiled darkly. “But you and I both have questions of the kind that won’t tolerate being unanswered.”

He had never shied away from taking pleasure in the deaths of men who sorely deserved it. And today would be no exception.

They plowed through the rather unremarkable village of Otsu without incident - perhaps one of the benefits of traveling with a child - and a few twisting paths later, they came to the border of a very thickly wooded, old-growth forest, heavy with gnarled trees and wild tangles of underbrush.

Enishi stumbled to a stop. “I remember this.”

“Good.” Hiko thumbed his sword loose from its sheath. “Then you can tell me what to expect from here on in.”

Enishi looked up at him, eyes wide with fear. “I… I don’t…” Abruptly he looked away, shook his head, and sucked in his breath. “Okay.” His fists were balled at his sides. “Okay, let’s find Neechan.”

After a few steps into the forest, Hiko frowned. Perhaps it was the density of the trees with their tangled vines and thick underbrush, but he could have sworn that every sound was muffled. His sense of balance felt strangely disrupted as well, as though the mossy earth were not quite solid and steady underfoot. And a tree that appeared to be several paces distant suddenly loomed large before him after a single step.

“This place is all wrong,” he muttered. “I can feel it.”

“I told you,” Enishi whispered. “Scary, evil-”

An explosion rocked the forest. The ground shook beneath them, the reverberation making the trees rattle and groan and blasting Enishi off his feet. 

Hiko swore, steadying himself and hoisting Enishi back to his feet. “There,” he said, pointing off to his left and up a steady slope. “It came from that way.”

“And... “ Enishi panted for breath. “And you want to go that way?”

“That way is where we’ll find my idiot apprentice, boy,” Hiko growled. “You mark my words. Now keep up.”

He took off at a run.

…  
...

The explosion rattled the shack, the walls shaking so violently that for a moment, Tomoe thought the roof might come down on them.

One hand went protectively to Kenichi’s head, the other tightened around his tiny body. Thankfully, he continued to sleep, once again wrapped snugly against Tomoe’s chest. 

When the shaking stopped, Tomoe looked over to Tatsumi. He looked decidedly unperturbed. All the same, she couldn’t help but whisper, “What was that?”

“That?” The slow, cruel smile spread across his face once more. “Oh, I imagine that will be Nakajou.”

He turned his head to look out through the doorway, his eyes fixed on the narrow and rough trail leading to the shack. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain, comrade,” he muttered. “The rest of us will send Battousai to Hell with your help.”

Tomoe sucked in her breath. “So he’s dead…”

Tatsumi rounded on her with a sudden and ferocious glare.

“Don’t pretend to care,” he spat. “Don’t act as though you have any feelings for the men that demon has killed.” 

He advanced on her as she shrank back, clutching Kenichi in terror. He bent down and came nose to nose with her. 

“He slaughtered your own fiance in the streets, and yet you took him to your bed and bore him a son,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Keep your false pity to yourself; the Yaminobu spit on it!”

She was too petrified to respond.

…  
...

Up the incline, past trees that seemed to leap somehow into his path, stumbling slightly on rises in the ground that by all rights ought not to have been there, Hiko sprinted towards the place where the noise of the explosion had appeared to come from. 

Not that he could be certain of anything in this forest, where all of his senses felt curiously twisted, but if he couldn’t at least be reasonably sure of where such a loud noise had come from, he supposed that he had worse problems.

Such as whether his idiot apprentice had gotten himself blown up just a few moments ago.

“I don’t remember the forest being this big,” Enishi panted, trailing several steps behind him, but doing his best to keep up.

“I never want to come to this place again,” Hiko muttered in response, cocking his head to the side in an attempt to listen more acutely. “It’s playing havoc with my senses.”

Small wonder, then, that the onmitsu had chosen this place for their retreat. If his finely-honed senses had been dampened, then any other swordsman would suffer a worse fate. Perhaps a man might not even sense an ambush until the blade struck home…

Again the disturbing thought that Kenshin might have fallen victim to the explosion edged its way to the forefront of his mind, and Hiko found himself searching almost frantically for something to chase it away. He had no stomach for entertaining such thoughts, and absolutely no plans for what to do in the event that they were true.

_You had better be alive, boy, or I swear by all the gods I’ll fall on my own sword and come after you…_

“Wait.” He held up a hand and listened intently. Was it the infernal forest playing tricks on him again, or had he heard the clang of steel against steel?

“Sure.” Enishi bent down, panting heavily, hands on his knees. “No problem.”

“That way.” Hiko pointed and, without waiting for Enishi to respond, took off at a sprint.

“Dammit!” Enishi rasped, though at least he was still keeping up.

Hiko burst through a last line of trees into a small clearing just in time to see Kenshin dodge out of the way of the sweeping stroke of a two-handed war axe.

The man wielding the axe was tall, perhaps only one or two sun shorter than Hiko himself, and quite large as well, though his bulk was far less muscular than Hiko’s. He was clad in the black, form-fitting garb favored by onmitsu, and his face was concealed behind a featureless cloth mask. And for someone of his great size, he moved with startling grace.

It appeared that Kenshin had been put on the defensive by the bigger man’s attack, but as the man lunged forward again for another stroke with the axe, Kenshin dropped to one knee and whirled into a crouching dodge to escape the blow. 

A dodge that, incredibly, he managed to turn into a crouching Ryukansen counterstrike that met the man’s thighs one after the other.

The man’s momentum carried him forward - well, most of him, anyway; his severed legs flopped to the ground behind him. Kenshin rose to his feet, blood sliding off his blade and trickling to the ground.

Next to Hiko, Enishi gasped. A quick glance at the boy showed that his eyes were wide with… confusion, was it? Fear? 

Hiko had no time to accurately gauge the boy’s feelings, however; the axe-wielding man was still moving. And so was Kenshin.

As the dying man inched forward, dragging his mutilated body along with the fading strength of his arms while his life leaked away from the gushing stumps of his legs, Kenshin moved to intercept him. The man reached out and clutched at a handful of leaves - no, clutched at a braided rope hidden beneath the leaves - and Kenshin struck once more, stabbing downward to plunge his sword through the back of his skull.

The man’s body spasmed and went limp, his hand still grasping the rope.

Enishi stepped back, shaking his head, eyes still saucer-wide.

Kenshin flicked the blood from his blade, resheathed his sword, and turned towards Hiko with a look in his eyes that Hiko had only ever seen there once before - the night Kenshin had had a nightmare and swung his sword at Hiko without knowing who he was.

It was the look of a hitokiri.

“Kenshin.” Hiko took a step forward, gratitude at seeing his idiot apprentice alive warring with a feeling he couldn’t identify. 

He had seen Kenshin cut through the trunks of trees during his training, seen him lay bandits low with a bokutou, even traded blows with him as recently as a few months ago. But in all the years he had known his apprentice, this was the first man he had ever seen Kenshin kill.

Kenshin, for his part, did not look pleased to see either them. His eyes remained hard and narrowed and his mouth tugged down into a frown.

“What are you doing here?” he said loudly. Too loudly.

“We came to get your wife,” Hiko responded, wondering whether the forest’s strange sense-deadening properties had done their work on his apprentice’s ears. An instant later, though, he realized the truth.

“The explosion.” 

His eyes went to the dead man’s hand, still clenched in its death grip around the braided rope that snaked away into the fallen leaves. He had been trying, with his final few breaths, to pull the detonating cord on a hidden bomb. To attempt to kill or cripple Kenshin, to weaken him for whichever other assassins lay in wait ahead of them.

Which meant, of course, that the explosion they had heard before had been triggered by another of the onmitsu. He had fought with Kenshin and lost, but managed to set the bomb off before succumbing to his wounds.

“Are you hurt?” Hiko asked, a bit more loudly.

“He’s covered in blood,” Enishi said raggedly. “That looks pretty hurt.” He folded his arms around his upper body. “What kind of question is that?”

“One of them detonated a bomb.” Kenshin nearly shouted the words, and gestured to the dead onmitsu at his feet. “And this one was trying to do the same.”

“I’d guessed as much,” Hiko said, half to himself, and headed forward to close the distance between him and Kenshin. He didn’t care to keep shouting and give away their position to anyone who might be planning an ambush. 

After a closer look at Kenshin, he turned back to Enishi. “And the blood isn’t his.”

Enishi looked sickened. “That doesn’t make it better.”

“Why are you here?” Kenshin repeated, though likely he hadn’t heard Hiko’s answer the first time. “You shouldn’t be here.” He gestured toward Enishi. “He shouldn’t be here.”

Hiko had just opened his mouth to answer his deaf apprentice’s question for the second time when he froze and hurled himself backwards, shoving Enishi out of the way as a clawed hand on the end of a spindly arm slashed down into the space where he’d just been standing.

“You talk too much,” hissed an inhuman voice from above.

Hiko herded Enishi behind him as a black shape dropped from the trees above. Hiko’s first thought was of an immense spider, all impossibly long limbs and a low, crouched body, but as the thing turned a masked face towards him and grinned a fang-toothed grin, he realized that it was a man - though a man grossly distorted out of all human proportion.

“So this is how Battousai bested Nakajou and Sumita,” the man hissed. 

The mask covered the upper half of his face, the eyes hidden behind mesh grilles in the shape of elongated teardrops. His mouth was uncovered and hideously ugly. The long, pointed teeth would not have been out of place in a shark’s mouth, and the tongue was of such a length as to be grotesque. 

“He brought help,” he finished.

Hiko thumbed his sword out of its sheath at exactly the same moment as Kenshin.

“No, I didn’t,” Kenshin said flatly, circling away from the spindly man without taking his eyes off him. “And they’re not involved.”

“The Yaminobu didn’t have monsters last time,” Enishi whispered. “I’ve never seen this one. The monster is a new one.”

“No one ever sees me and lives,” the man hissed. 

His limbs, Hiko noted as he stood his ground, were at least half again as long as those of an ordinary man - except for his right arm. That was easily twice as long, and the fingers of that hand were tipped with long, razor-sharp steel claws like those of a predatory bird.

“This body is the secret of the Yatsume mining clan,” the malformed man continued. “None who see it may ever live to tell the tale.” The gleaming claws clicked together.

Kenshin actually rolled his eyes. Hiko couldn’t help but do the same.

“This forest will be a grave for all of you.” The inhuman mouth stretched grotesquely into a shark-like grimace that might have been a smile. “I will kill you all!”

Kenshin made a noise of disgust. “I don’t have time for this. I need to find my wife and my son.” He spared a glance at Hiko. “So long as you’re here, you take care of him.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and dashed off between the trees.

“So,” hissed the spider-like man angrily, “Battousai is a coward.” 

“You were the one hiding in a tree!” Enishi shouted. 

The man crouched low, his jutting knees and elbows making him look even more like an insect than he had before. “I will lay your heads at his feet, and then -”

“Now who’s talking too much?” Hiko asked Enishi with another roll of his eyes. “This is as good a time as any to learn this lesson, boy. Any man who goes to this much trouble to make himself look intimidating has done so in an attempt to hide his own inadequacy as a fighter.”

He snorted, drawing his sword unhurriedly and holding it casually at his side as he gave the freak a cursory examination. “And the more outlandish his appearance, the greater the inadequacy he tries to disguise.”

“I’ll kill you!” shrieked the disfigured man, slashing with his claws at Hiko and Enishi and hitting nothing but air as Hiko shoved Enishi back and dodged almost lazily. “I’ll kill you both for your insult!”

“No, you won’t.” Hiko leapt high into the air and landed lightly behind the man, his sword held loosely in one hand. “You’ll yelp and bleat and make threatening noises and be unpleasant to look at.”

The man screamed in rage and slashed out again, but Hiko sprang out of the way once more.

“You know, I’d have half a mind to let you go if I didn’t know you’d still lurk in the shadows and strike down lesser men from ambush.” Hiko dodged once, twice, and stopped the third slash with the flat of his sword. “But you’re a coward and an assassin. You threatened to kill this boy, you kidnapped his sister and her child, and I doubt the world will shed a tear for you when you’re gone.”

The man screeched his outrage yet again, leaping high into the air, and Hiko sprang up after him. The downward slash of the claws met the rising slash of the Ryushousen.

The freak’s grating scream turned into a gurgle, and faded away quickly as the halves of him dropped twitching to the ground. Hiko landed lightly, the barest crunch of dead leaves beneath his boots, and flicked the freak’s blood from his blade.

“Pathetic,” he snorted as he turned to check on the boy.

Enishi stood frozen in place, an unreadable expression on his face and his arms limp at his sides. He had been sprayed liberally with the freak’s blood, though he didn’t seem inclined to wipe it away right then.

Hiko reached into his cloak, coming out with a square of rice paper. As he cleaned the blade of his sword, he spoke to the boy.

“What’s the matter?” He crumpled the soiled paper and tossed it aside. “If you’re going to be sick to your stomach…”

“No.” Enishi’s expression turned incredulous. “I haven’t eaten anything except pickles.” He reached out tentatively and touched his hair, fingers coming away bloodied. 

“If the way my apprentice and I deal with these men seems extreme,” Hiko said evenly, “just remember that apart from kidnapping your sister and your five-month-old nephew, they also beat you nearly to death and left you to starve.”

“I know that.” Enishi scowled, then let his gaze travel to the spindly man’s severed remains and the forcibly amputated man beyond him. “I just… this is the first... they seemed so much…” He shook his head in clear frustration, voice trailing away.

“You’re surprised to find them merely human?” Hiko sighed, sheathing his sword, and gestured for the boy to walk with him. “Every victim is always astonished to see his oppressor bleed. To be reminded that for all the power they seemed to wield, and however many times greater than his their power might have seemed, there is always someone stronger.”

“Well,” he corrected himself as they followed the path Kenshin had taken, “nearly always.”

Enishi turned and stared once again at the dead men. “Kenshin said he’s been training since his seventh summer, but he never really talks about it.” He frowned. “He’d rather garden. Or fish. But if you could actually do this, why wouldn’t you talk about it?” 

“Because advertising the level of skill required to master Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is tantamount to challenging every idiot in the vicinity who wants to make a name for himself.” Hiko shook his head. “I’m sure you can imagine how quickly that sort of a life would become tiresome.”

“He’s not even a master though. You keep calling him your apprentice.” Abruptly Enishi’s eyes widened, and almost to himself, he murmured, “He’s not even a master.”

“No,” Hiko muttered, taking a sudden dislike to the direction the conversation had headed. For a long time, he had been perfectly reconciled to the manner in which Kenshin’s apprenticeship would end, but lately…

Better to steer the topic - and his own inner musings - away from Kenshin’s lack of mastery. This was neither the time nor the place for such matters.

“Even so, his skill easily surpasses that of nearly every man alive.” Hiko gestured toward the path again and set off. “And besides, he has quite enough corpses to his credit already, thanks to this war. There’s no call for inviting more.”

…  
...

The world outside the shack had been almost hauntingly quiet since the explosion. 

Tomoe longed to get up from the floor, both to stretch her legs and to ease the door open and see the world for herself, but she would never get past Tatsumi.

Truthfully, she was too afraid to even stand up, terrified that Tatsumi would take any movement as a direct challenge to him. She had wrapped Kenichi snugly against her to make it harder for Tatsumi to take him, but if the man really wanted to do so, it wouldn’t be difficult.

So she stayed where she was, hands gentle on her sleeping son and eyes trained on the door.

“It’s been some time since Nakajou’s signal,” Tatsumi sneered. “I wonder if Sumita and Mumyoui will be back soon with your _husband’s_ head.”

Tomoe tightened her hands against Kenichi’s tiny body and considered her words carefully. Finally she said, “It’s too quiet out there.”

“Too quiet?” He laughed, a harsh jeering sound. “The Yaminobu are onmitsu, you idiot girl. Our domain is the silence and the shadow. And we are the best of the best.”

He folded his thick arms over his thick chest and looked at her with that ugly sneering smile. “I want to see the look on your face when that traitor’s head lands at your feet. I want to watch the hope drain from your eyes when you realize that no one is left to come and save you. And then…” He laughed again, the sound worse than ever. “Then, the real fun will begin.”

“Cruel.” The word slipped out. Tomoe suppressed a wince.

“Cruel?” Tatsumi’s smile vanished, his face twisting into an even uglier expression of cold rage. “The greatest cruelty I could achieve in my wildest dreams is nothing next to the cruelty in the heart of a woman who married her fiance’s murderer. Let me tell you something about cruelty, girl -”

But his voice trailed off as the unmistakable sound of footsteps reached their ears.

Tomoe looked up, hope flaring suddenly in her chest, even as a small part of her urged caution. It could be anyone out there, and yet…

“Get up,” Tatsumi spat. He clamped a hand around her arm in a grip of iron and dragged her to her feet with irresistible strength. “We’re going outside. You’re going to witness this.”

The daylight was dazzling after the darkness inside the shack. She cradled Kenichi protectively against her even as she screwed up her eyes against the sudden brightness. But when her eyes at last adjusted, her heart gave a leap.

Kenshin stood in the clearing in front of the shack, sword in hand. He was spattered with blood, but showed no sign of weakness or injury. His face was set in the hard, stony expression he had worn the night of the Kyoto fire, and his eyes held death.

“You’re a dead man,” she whispered to Tatsumi with surprising satisfaction. “And I will witness it.”

…  
...

As Hiko followed Kenshin’s trail up the slope through the forest, he found it surprising that no other onmitsu lay in wait for them. Kenshin had dealt with the one who had caused the explosion, then the one with the axe. Hiko had dispatched the spidery braggart - and that had been all. Surely the Yaminobu had more than three people in their ranks…

He wondered which of them had been the one to hurt Enishi.

A voice drifted to them from ahead, the words indistinguishable but the tone clearly one of anger. He quickened his pace, and in a few moments they had reached a clearing.

In the middle of the clearing stood a dilapidated shack. In front of the shack stood a muscular man with long, flowing white hair. He was clad in black trousers with jika-tabi and shin guards, a sleeveless black gi, and gauntlets of some dull metal that covered both arms from knuckle to elbow. 

Behind him, on the engawa, stood Tomoe, Kenichi cradled against her in his wrap. And opposite him, sword in hand, stood Kenshin.

Beside him, Enishi stiffened.

“It’s him,” he whispered, voice cold with fear. “Tatsumi.”

“I see.” Hiko nodded with grim satisfaction. “In that case, boy, you had better watch this. And don’t blink.”

“We can’t…” Enishi swallowed loudly, then shook his head and seemed to find his resolve somewhere. “We can’t just stand here.”

The white-haired man - this so-called Tatsumi - continued angrily declaiming as Hiko held out a hand to bar Enishi’s path forward. “We absolutely can, and we certainly will.” 

“But Neechan is right there!” Enishi ducked under Hiko’s arm and made to sprint forward. “Neechan!”

From the engawa, Tomoe looked over to where Enishi and Hiko stood, eyes widening perceptibly.

“I said stay put.” Hiko reached out and latched onto the back of Enishi’s collar with one hand, hauling him back. “Don’t be stupid, boy. Your sister won’t want you hurt.”

Tatsumi was still speaking, and Hiko could see the exact moment at which Kenshin decided he had heard enough.

The slight shake of his head was a dead giveaway. The settling of his shoulders in a deep and controlled exhalation ought to have made it clear to even the least observant bystander. But when Kenshin pivoted slowly on the balls of his feet, Hiko could tell what was about to happen almost down to the exact detail.

Slowly, carefully, deliberately - even methodically - Kenshin slid his sword back into its sheath.

“Watch carefully, boy,” Hiko whispered, still holding tight to the back of Enishi’s collar. “This may be the only time you see it.”

“What?” Enishi whispered back. “See what?”

Eyes never leaving Tatsumi, Kenshin sank gradually into an exaggerated crouch. Feet spread wide. Knees bent, weight evenly distributed, heels off the ground. Sheath held loosely in the left hand, right hand hovering near the sword hilt.

Battoujutsu stance.

“Just watch,” Hiko murmured.

Tatsumi’s face split into a sneering smile. “Are you ready to pay for your treachery then, Battousai?” He popped his neck and cracked his knuckles, assuming a fighting stance of his own. “One of us must die, and my Jutsu-Shiki Muteki-Ryu has no equal in the world.”

“Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is invincible,” Hiko said softly, with a deadly smile. “And you’re already dead.”

The air seemed to quiver with tension, like a koto string after the final note of its tune had been plucked. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.

Hiko’s well-trained eyes could follow what came next; Tomoe and Enishi would likely only see a blur of motion that might be resolved seconds later, after their minds had had time to catch up with the impossible speed their eyes had registered.

Tatsumi might have seen the beginning of the motion, because he brought his gauntleted forearm up and outward to parry Kenshin’s slash. His reflexes were excellent, his form admirable, and his common sense entirely nonexistent.

Kenshin’s sword sheared through gauntlet, flesh, and bone. Tatsumi’s hand and half his forearm pinwheeled into the air. And before the look on the white-haired man’s face had time to change, Kenshin struck the second of the two blows of the Soryusen.

He brought the sheath up and around in a reverse grip, the lacquered hardwood making contact with the side of Tatsumi’s head with a noise like a mochi-pounding mallet striking a bitter melon. There was an explosion of red and gray as the sheath caved in the man’s skull.

Tatsumi was dead before his body hit the ground.

Hiko nodded in satisfaction. “Just as I said.”

…  
...

Four.

There had only been four Yaminobu. Impossible not to count, even if he hadn’t intended to count every single one of them as he killed them.

And now there were none.

Kenshin rose from his crouch, flicked the blood off his blade and resheathed his sword. He ignored the fresh spatter of warm blood - it could mingle with the blood he hadn’t washed out yet - and even the flecks of grey matter that had sprayed down his front in favor of stepping over Tatsumi’s rapidly cooling body to get to the two people on the engawa.

His _wife._

His _son._

“Tomoe.” He stepped up onto the engawa, arms encircling his wife and pulling her against him until their foreheads met. “Are you hurt? Is he hurt?”

If he said the words a bit loudly, well, his ears were still ringing.

Tomoe stiffened for a second before melting into his embrace and burying her face in his shoulder. 

“We’re fine,” she said, her voice muffled. “I was so terribly frightened, he said he would kill Kenichi, and I didn’t know what had happened to Enishi, and I thought he would…”

Her voice trailed off and she gave a pronounced shudder, clinging to him more tightly.

“Are _you_ hurt?” came her voice again.

“Just my ears.” His hands went to the back of her head, fingers curling into her hair. “One of them detonated a bomb.”

Tomoe uttered a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“But it’s fine,” he said quickly. “Just my ears. It won’t last.”

“Neechan!” Enishi clattered onto the engawa, and Kenshin reluctantly stepped back so the boy could throw his arms around his sister. “Neechan, we were so worried about you.”

“Thank the gods you’re alive.” Tomoe hugged her brother tightly. “When I saw Nakajou hit you with that dart -” She closed her eyes, shook her head, and clutched him to her desperately.

“I’m stronger than one dart, Neechan.” Enishi’s voice was muffled against Kenichi’s wrap. “Even if all I’ve eaten in two days is a handful of pickles.”

“That was a good Soryusen,” Hiko offered, coming up behind them with a faint smile on his face. Turning to Tomoe, he nodded toward the bundle tied to her chest. “The baby?”

Kenshin reached out and ran his fingers through the red fluff of Kenichi’s hair. “Has he been sleeping this whole time?”

Again Tomoe seemed undecided about whether to cry or laugh, and made a noise halfway between the two.

“All for the best, I’m sure,” said Hiko with a wry look at Enishi. “Now, we’ve a two-day walk ahead of us before we can eat or sleep properly again, so we’d best be on our way.”

“Can we stop and eat somewhere?” Enishi asked.

Kenshin frowned. “I left Kyoto in a hurry.”

“Meaning what?” Enishi demanded.

A small shrug. “I didn’t think to bring money.”

Enishi turned to look at Tomoe, who seemed slightly put out. “I don’t have anything.”

Everyone turned to look at Hiko, who was positively exasperated. “Yes, of course I stopped to pick up my coin purse before heading out to rescue a kidnap victim. I always do.”

Kenshin shook his head, took Tomoe’s hand, and together they stepped off the engawa. “So we’d better get you home then.”

Tomoe hesitated briefly, a look of concern spreading across her face. “Will you stay?” she asked softly, her eyes meeting Kenshin’s.

Her hand tightened in his, and Kenshin’s gaze traveled down to his sleeping son, snug in his wrap. He had gotten bigger, his soft-cheeked face delightfully round, and Kenshin was keenly aware of how much he had missed in the past few months.

He was also keenly aware of how much he was needed back in Kyoto, and yet…

“Of course.” He brought his hand up to Tomoe’s face, and she leaned her cheek into his palm. “For a few days, of course.”

“Excellent,” Hiko cut in crisply. “And the sooner we set out, the more time you’ll have at home to act like newlyweds all over again.” He gestured at the path back down the slope, where they had come from. “Come on, then. Let’s not waste the daylight.”

“C’mon, Neechan! Kenshin!” Enishi dashed on ahead of them to walk with Hiko. “The sooner we get back, the sooner we can eat.”

Kenshin took Tomoe’s hand and together they walked out of the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> So the Yaminobu are DEAD, and good riddance. That extra year of training with Hiko upped Kenshin's hitokiri game, as did the lack of confused, OAV-style betrayal. I'm DYING to know (but not literally, not like... Yaminobu dead) what you thought of this chapter, since it's been a long time coming.
> 
> "But wait, FrostyEmma," you say reasonably, as someone who absolutely talks to computer screens, "there are still several dangling plot threads that haven't been resolved."
> 
> TEN POINTS TO THE HOUSE OF YOUR CHOICE! (JKR, don't interact.) Very astute! There are several dangling plot threads because the story isn't over yet. Just because the Yaminobu are good and deaded doesn't mean the story is good and ended, so stick around! Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Damn, it's late and I'm tired and I have a very busy week ahead of me, so please do leave me those wonderful, amazing, inspiring comments with the understanding that it's going to take me a little bit to get back to you. But I love your comments! I have amazing readers! You are all truly the best! (And as always, you can poke on tumblr at frostyemma.)


	16. Hitokiri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have a favor to ask.”
> 
> “Name it,” Katsura said instantly. “If it is in my power to give you anything - anything at all - then I will.”
> 
> “I owe my family’s safety to my successor,” Kenshin said. “I’d like to thank him. Personally.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government   
> Daisho : set of swords, with katana (long) and wakizashi (short)  
> Hakubaikou : white plum perfume  
> Machiya : traditional wooden townhouse for merchants and craftsmen  
> Onmitsu : ninja spies and assassins  
> Seiza : traditional Japanese way of sitting on the knees  
> Kiseru : long, thin, traditional Japanese pipe

**Founding year of Keiou  
(October 1865)**

They returned to Mount Atago a day and a half later, filthy, exhausted, and hungry. 

Kenshin got the fire under the bath going and made noises about Tomoe going first, but she took a long look at him and delicately suggested that he seemed to have more need of it.

Hiko took one fleeting glance at him and flatly said, “You’ve got blood from a week ago on you.”

Kenshin didn’t argue the point.

He took his time washing up, sloughing dried blood and caked mud (and grey matter, though he didn’t dwell too terribly long on that) from his body and even from his hair, and though he didn’t linger too long in the bath, it was nice to soak for a bit.

Tomoe left a clean yukata for him, which he wrapped gratefully around himself, and when he entered the house, he found a bowl of warm ochazuke, topped with a salted plum and toasted sesame, seeds waiting for him. 

He had missed his wife very much.

Once everyone had bathed and eaten their fill, and after Tomoe had nursed Kenichi to sleep for the evening (and again, Kenshin marveled at how _big_ their son had already gotten, how perfectly chubby and round), Enishi wasted no time falling into his futon, rolling over, and going right to sleep.

“The boy’s got the right idea,” Hiko grunted as he slid into his futon as well. “I don’t plan to be up again before midday tomorrow.” 

Kenshin looked back and forth between the wall and his own futon. It had been months, really, since he had slept in a futon - it never felt _safe_ \- but Tomoe reached out and took him by the hand. 

“Come to sleep,” she murmured, Kenichi cradled in her arms. She tugged at his hand to bring him down into the futon beside her. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, their son snuggled in the futon between them. “And I’ve missed our son. I missed you both so much.”

“I talk to him about you every chance I have.” Tomoe rested her hand against his chest. “I hope he understands at least a bit of it.”

She breathed in deeply and sighed in what sounded like contentment, but after a moment, she pulled her head back and looked at him with the ghost of a smile gleaming in her eyes. 

“You wore my scarf when you came for me,” she said.

“Always,” he whispered. “Every night.” A slight frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. “It might need to be washed now.”

His eyelids drooped, and he started in surprise. He had thought there was no possible way he would fall asleep in a futon so easily that evening, not after months of hyper-vigilant sleep against various walls, but he was fading fast.

“You kept it with you.” Her fingers carded through his still-damp hair. “And it kept you safe…”

“I’ll always come back to you,” he said, or maybe he only thought he said it, because Tomoe’s fingernails were gentle against his scalp and his eyes were closing of their own accord and he was drifting, drifting…

...

Kenshin awoke to peals of baby laughter against the erratic rhythm of what sounded like several spoons being whacked against a bucket.

He sat up in the futon, pushing hair out of his eyes, to see Kenichi seated on the floor, banging what appeared to be a rattle against an upturned wooden bucket. Enishi sat next to him, chin in hand, while Tomoe stood at the stove, stirring the breakfast pot.

“He does this now,” Enishi said by way of explanation. “My job is to make sure he doesn’t fall into the hearth.”

“That’s a good job.” Kenshin watched his son for a moment. “How long has he been doing this?”

Enishi frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe a few weeks?”

Kenshin suppressed a wince. He had missed so much.

“He decides when it’s time for the rest of us to wake up,” Hiko grumbled from his futon. “Though I’m still in charge of deciding when it’s time for me to get on my feet.” He pulled the blanket up over his ears and rolled over with a grunt.

“When you’re up, you can take over for Enishi,” Tomoe called from the stove. “Maybe you can teach Kenichi a different tune.”

They sat around the hearth for their meal, as they had always done, and Tomoe served bowls of warm rice porridge, which was new, though Kenshin quickly discovered the reason why.

Most of the porridge that Tomoe attempted to spoon into Kenichi ended up on his face or down his front or somehow in his hair, but Tomoe calmly continued to try to feed him all the same, and Kenshin watched with great enjoyment.

She was so patient with their son, and he loved her all the more for it.

While Tomoe was washing the breakfast dishes, Kenichi wiped clean of all porridge and wrapped snugly against her, Kenshin stepped outside to examine the garden and was pleased to discover it had been well-tended in his absence.

“We’ve been looking after it,” Hiko offered from somewhere behind him. He turned to see Hiko standing by the side of the house, arms folded loosely. “Though I expect you’ll want to do some tinkering now that you’re here.”

“I appreciate it.” Kenshin folded his arms into the sleeves of his yukata and turned his attention back to the garden. “The cabbage should be ready any day now.”

Hiko made a noncommittal sort of noise in response and moved over towards him.

“Are you going to pull a comb through your hair?” he asked with a smirk. “I’m surprised your wife hasn’t said anything about it yet.”

Kenshin turned and gave Hiko a long look, eyebrow raised. “You first.”

Neither of them had tied their hair back since washing it the other night, and they had both gone to bed with damp locks.

“She’s not my wife.” Hiko shrugged. “I’m in no danger of being sat down and forcibly combed.”

A faint smile drifted across Kenshin’s lips. “That wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

Hiko rolled his eyes at that. “That girl is a bodhisattva, tolerating you the way she does.” He considered a moment. “Only a tier or two below me, in fact, for the very same reason.”

Kenshin rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the garden. “I think I’ll encourage the cabbage to grow faster now.”

He was aware of Hiko watching him for a long moment, but neither of them said anything until Hiko broke the silence.

“I assume you were able to stop the bombardment in Choshu,” he said in a low voice - clearly he did not want to be overheard. 

Kenshin didn’t answer right away. 

Finally he said, “Stopping the bombardment was the easy part. They were not…” The image of the one sailor hurling himself overboard into the black waters below flashed across his mind. “They were not best prepared for that.”

Hiko snorted. “I don’t imagine they were prepared for you, no.” 

Kenshin didn’t know what to say to that. 

Hiko paused a moment, arching an eyebrow. “Was there a difficult part, if stopping the bombardment was easy?”

“The Bakufu overwhelmed Choshu. It took months to push them out.” Kenshin stared down at the garden, seeing none of it. “Months, and an untold number of lives lost on both sides. They started targeting civilians. They would have burned down entire villages if we hadn’t moved to stop them.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed, and he didn’t speak for a moment.

“They know they’re going to lose,” he said finally, and his voice was flat and heavy. “And their aim is to make their opponents’ victory so costly as to no longer be a victory.”

“The death throes of the beast,” Kenshin echoed, though it seemed as if Katsura had uttered those words years ago, instead of months. “And in return, a war of attrition.”

Hiko’s eyes lost some of their narrowness. “And who told you that?”

Kenshin glanced at him. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” Hiko snorted. “Whoever it was has some degree of insight, at least.” He looked appraisingly at Kenshin. “And how long will your band of insurrectionists be able to fight down these death throes? Keeping in mind that they’re going to have to do so while shielding innocents from them?”

“Until the war is won,” Kenshin said simply. “One way or another.”

...

When Kenshin stepped back inside the house, Tomoe pushed Kenichi into his arms and directed him to sit down on the wooden floor.

“It wouldn’t have taken long to tie back your hair last night before you went to sleep,” she chastised him lightly as she began to work on his hair with a comb. “Yours looks nearly as bad as Hiko-san’s.”

“I can hear you,” came Hiko’s voice from outside, halfway between amusement and annoyance.

“Yes, but then you wouldn’t have been able to run your fingers through my hair and so cleverly put me to sleep,” Kenshin said with a small smile.

Kenichi felt warm and solid in his lap, and Kenshin gently ran his own fingers through the boy’s fluff of hair.

“I’ve missed you so terribly much,” she murmured after a while. She continued to work gently at his hair, but her voice seemed to tremble. “And the past few days have been…”

Kenshin hugged their baby against him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get there faster.”

“You got there as quickly as you could.” Tomoe’s hands continued to work the tangles carefully out of his hair. “You all did, and you got there before they could do anything… worse.” She shuddered. “But it was still frightening.”

Some very dark thoughts crossed Kenshin’s mind just then, and he was almost relieved when Tomoe sighed heavily and said:

“You’ll have to leave again, won’t you?”

The question hung in the air for a moment, then quietly Kenshin said, “The war isn’t over yet, and the Bakufu has started targeting civilians.” He stared down at the top of his son’s fuzzy little head. “I can’t let that continue.”

“I know,” Tomoe murmured.

Her hands ceased their motions and came to rest softly on the sides of his head. And then, as light as a whisper of wind, her lips touched the crown of his head in a brief kiss.

“You’re too good a man to leave people to their suffering,” she said, and her voice carried so many hints of so many different emotions that it was difficult to know where to begin. “Not enough people know that about you.”

He sat with that comment for a moment, uncertain of how to reply. Uncertain if he even agreed with her assessment of him.

Finally, haltingly, he said, “I don’t think anything I’ve done is good.” Kenichi babbled in his lap, and Kenshin was so very grateful for him. “But it’s… necessary.”

Tomoe’s cheek, unmistakably soft, came to rest against the top of his head.

“You came back for me when I needed you the most.” Her voice trembled like an autumn leaf in a high wind. “I know you’ll come back to me when all of this is over.”

...

After breakfast the next morning, Kenshin was pleasantly surprised that Enishi chose to join him in the garden. 

“We’ve been tending to it all this time.” Enishi gestured broadly toward the cabbages. “Don’t you like our handiwork?”

“Your handiwork is fine.” Kenshin glanced at him. “But I’ve been tending this garden since my seventh summer. Habit by now.”

“In other words,” Enishi looked up at him slyly, “you were always kind of boring.”

Kenshin shrugged. “Habit by now, too.”

There wasn’t really much poking around to be done; the garden really had been well-tended in his absence, but he felt compelled to inspect it anyway. Habit, after all.

Abruptly Enishi said, “So that last move that you… that you killed Tatsumi with...”

Tatsumi must have been the white-haired one then, the one who stood between Kenshin and his wife and son. Kenshin was fairly certain the man had introduced himself, but he had also done quite a bit of talking and Kenshin had very abruptly grown tired of listening to him and had moved to end things. 

Kenshin barely looked up. “Soryusen.”

“Right. Soryusen.” Enishi plowed through the next question. “So how long did it take you to learn that?”

“That?” Kenshin frowned and rose from his crouch. “It’s very advanced. Maybe… not until I had been learning for six years? Seven?”

Enishi’s face fell.

Kenshin’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Enishi said quickly. “Just curious. People can be curious about things, you know.”

Kenshin left it alone.

...

The next morning, after breakfast, Kenshin readied himself to return to Kyoto.

If he didn’t go then, it would become more and more difficult to tear himself away. And, as he reminded himself, if the Bakufu had their way, that sort of peace on Mount Atago would never be allowed to last.

And so the Bakufu could never be allowed to win.

Enishi didn’t run out of the house while declaring how much he hated him this time. Instead he said, “Just Soryusen every soldier you see. That seems like a good plan.”

The corner of Kenshin’s mouth twitched upward. “Duly noted.”

Hiko stood impassively beside the door. “I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing you again before the first snow falls.”

Kenshin stepped into his zori. “I don’t know.” He bit back a sigh, along with the fierce desire to put his daisho up in the rafters and return to the warmth of the hearth. “Probably not.”

Hiko snorted. “Then don’t be surprised if we’ve begun the spring planting without you when you do decide to return.”

“Well, now that you’ve warned him,” Enishi said crossly, “he won’t be.”

Kenshin nodded. “Exactly.”

Hiko looked at Kenshin with a piercing gaze for a long moment, then gave a small sigh. “I suppose you’d better get going, then.”

Again, Kenshin refrained from sighing. He bowed instead, then forced himself to walk out the door. Tomoe followed quietly behind him, Kenichi wrapped snugly against her.

“Will you be able to come back again?” she murmured, once they were a little way into the clearing. “I don’t care whether it’s before the snow or not.”

Kenshin wrapped his arms around her waist, their baby warm and solid between them, and leaned his forehead against hers.

“I’ll find time to come back,” he promised. “I can’t say when, but I’ll come back to see you and our son before the war ends.”

“I wish I could tell you to just keep safe.” Her eyes were closed, and there was a slight tremor in her voice. “And I wish I could tell you not to take any chances. But then you wouldn’t be you, would you?”

“Habit by now.” He breathed in the warm, comforting scent of hakubaikou, then kissed her very gently on the lips before pulling back slightly. “I love you, Tomoe. I’ll always love you.”

She opened her eyes, glistening with unshed tears. Slowly, she reached into her sleeve and pulled out the scarf she had given him before he’d left at the end of the summer, washed and carefully folded.

“Then come back home to us,” she whispered, reaching up to gently drape the scarf around his neck. “To me.”

“Always,” he murmured. “I’ll always come back to you.”

He kissed her one last time, dropped a kiss on his son’s fuzzy little head, and then turned to go before he could change his mind.

Though he reached Kyoto long after nightfall, he managed to avoid any confrontations before reaching the Yazuya. He could certainly hear them though, spread out over several streets, but for one more evening at least, no one would die at his hand. 

The innkeeper greeted him with a curt, “Your room is ready.” She looked him up and down. “Though your clothes don’t seem to need washing.”

“No,” he agreed, and turned to go.

Abruptly the innkeeper said, “He left a message for you.” She eyed him shrewdly and passed him a folded piece of paper, which Kenshin immediately opened.

_Meet me as soon as you’ve returned._

There was no need to sign it. Katsura’s calligraphy was instantly recognizable. 

Kenshin slid the paper into his sleeve. “I’ll be back later this evening,” he said, and once again stepped out into the night.

...

A bodyguard let Kenshin into the safehouse - a nondescript machiya on an equally nondescript sidestreet - with a nod and brought him right to Katsura, who appeared to be poring over a list of some sort while drinking tea.

Kenshin decided not to ask who was on the list. It wasn’t supposed to be his concern anymore.

The bodyguard announced him, and Katsura set down his list and teacup instantly. 

“Himura, come in. Sit down.” He looked and sounded both relieved and agitated. “I have a great deal to tell you. And I imagine you have every bit as much to tell me.”

“It depends.” Kenshin knelt down on the spare cushion, setting his katana on the floor next to him. “What are we discussing tonight?”

Katsura poured him a cup of tea and looked intently across at him. “Before anything else, the fact that I’m pleased to know that your family is unharmed.”

“Ah.” So it was to be that sort of conversation. “Yes, they are.”

Katsura seemed gratified. Leaning in, his eyebrows lowered as he spoke. “And we’ve discovered the traitor at last.”

Kenshin stilled at that. “Oh?”

A look of deep displeasure came over Katsura’s face - an ugly look Kenshin had never seen on him before. 

“Oh, yes.” His voice was bitter and sharp. “Iizuka, damn him.”

For a long, stupid moment, Kenshin was certain he had misheard him. 

Iizuka had been a louche (for Kenshin was certain the man had to be dead now), but a _traitor?_ When he had been one of the men so personally entwined in the assassinations? That hardly made sense, to willingly get so close to something so unsavory, yet not believe in any of what they were trying to accomplish.

He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. 

The only question that came to him was, “Why?”

“Money,” Katsura spat. He looked more furious, more disgusted - more _betrayed_ \- than Kenshin had imagined he could look. “The Bakufu were paying him for information. He was almost certainly the man who gave us away at the Ikedaya, and who knows what other losses we’ve suffered because of him?”

“Money,” Kenshin echoed flatly. 

He shook his head, still trying to make sense out of something so utterly senseless, but came up short at every turn. 

“There is always the risk of betrayal in wartime.” Katsura stared into his teacup, his voice still filled with bitterness. “More so during a revolution like ours. But to be sold like a fish at market by a man I trusted so implicitly…” He scoffed. “To have everything we’ve worked so hard for, everything our brave friends died for, nearly ripped to pieces over a handful of coins…”

He shook his head, seemingly unable to put his feelings into words.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Kenshin had no stomach for the tea Katsura had poured, but he wrapped his hands around the cup for warmth. 

Finally he said, “Who killed him?”

He was suddenly, fiercely glad to no longer be working as a hitokiri. Perhaps Iizuka deserved whatever he had gotten, but if Kenshin had been the one given the assignment…

Best not to dwell there.

“Your successor.” Katsura looked at him, his piercing gaze seeming to search for something. “He became suspicious and followed Iizuka. It turns out that Iizuka was meeting with the Yaminobu to discuss how best to kidnap your wife.”

Kenshin’s gaze fell into his teacup.

Best that he was no longer working as a hitokiri.

“The Yaminobu,” he finally said, and he couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice, “will no longer be a concern.”

Katsura nodded, and his satisfaction was evident in his voice. “That sounds like good news for all of us.”

“For my family especially.” Kenshin set the teacup down. 

“Of course.” Katsura inclined his head. “And as I said, I’m pleased to learn that they are safe and sound.” His voice grew more serious. “But the loss of his personal onmitsu at the hands of our most notable swordsman will be a terrible blow to the Shogun. Indeed, to the entire Bakufu.” 

“One can hope,” Kenshin murmured. 

Katsura paused for a moment. “You may not realize the magnitude of the victory you’ve just inadvertently won for us.”

Kenshin’s brow furrowed, and he cast about for an appropriate response. Finally, he settled on the truth. “I hadn’t thought of that. In this case, I was thinking only of keeping my family safe.”

“My point exactly.” 

Katsura smiled. His eyes, though, were tired and almost a little sad.

“I don’t know whether you realize this, Himura, but we would have lost this war ages ago if it hadn’t been for you.” Katsura looked at him with real warmth. “When we couldn’t find you after the Kyoto fire, it was all I could do to keep hope alive. And now that you’re back, you’re winning battles for us without even knowing that you’re doing it.”

Kenshin sat with that for a long moment, and when he still couldn’t formulate an appropriate response, he reached for his teacup and took a lingering sip.

“My successor.” He set the cup down and looked at Katsura. “If it hadn’t been for him, we still wouldn’t know who the traitor was. He’s helped to save an untold number of lives in figuring it out.”

“Yes.” Katsura’s face clouded again. “I’m somewhat ashamed of myself for not having discovered it beforehand. It ought to have been my responsibility.” He sighed and shook his head. “Still, you’re correct. And I will admit that it was something of a pleasure for me to write the letter of condemnation for Iizuka myself.”

Kenshin understood that much. After all, it had been something of a pleasure to count the Yaminobu, and so he felt compelled to ask the question. 

“What did it say?”

“That the Ishin Shishi deal more harshly with traitors than with our bitterest enemies,” replied Katsura with grim satisfaction. “And that the death he was given was better than the one he deserved.”

Kenshin nodded, but his thoughts returned to the one who had been responsible for Iizuka’s death. If it hadn’t been for him...

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Name it,” Katsura said instantly. “If it is in my power to give you anything - anything at all - then I will.”

“I owe my family’s safety to my successor,” Kenshin said. “I’d like to thank him. Personally.”

Katsura smiled again, and this time there was no sadness in it - well, perhaps a touch lingering around his eyes.

“You could have asked for anything,” he said with a soft chuckle. “An extra koku of rice every year, a dozen new kimono, ten fine swords…” He shook his head. “And all you want is to pay a man an honest courtesy.”

Katsura stopped chuckling, though his smile still held.

“I will arrange it as soon as you’ve left.”

...

Two nights later, the same bodyguard once again let Kenshin into the nondescript machiya, where Katsura was waiting for him.

“Good evening, Himura.” Katsura stood up as Kenshin entered, some concern in his face. “I’d expected you earlier. Was there any difficulty getting here?”

In fact, Kenshin had been waylaid by the Shinsengumi’s third unit, whose captain was turning out to be something of an ongoing nuisance. There wasn’t any particular reason to trouble Katsura with that information though. It would be sorted out in time, one way or another.

“Some,” he said. “But not enough to worry about.”

Katsura seemed satisfied with that, and gestured for Kenshin to follow him into the next room. 

A single man was waiting inside, seated seiza on a cushion and smoking an ornate long-stemmed kiseru pipe. He wore an unadorned kimono of plain dark blue and an equally simple grey hakama. His hair was as glossy black as the wing of a crow, pulled back into a severely tight ponytail that emphasized his angular face and widow’s-peak hairline, and his eyes were dark and piercing. 

He seemed only a handful of years older than Kenshin, if even that much.

The man got to his feet on seeing the pair of them enter, revealing that he was quite tall and thin, and offered a bow to Katsura. 

“This is Shishio Makoto,” Katsura said to Kenshin, returning the man’s bow with an inclination of his head. “He’s taken over the post you vacated. Shishio, this is Himura Kenshin.”

Shishio’s eyes seemed to light up fervently at the mention of Kenshin’s name. “The legendary Hitokiri Battousai,” he said in a low voice that somehow managed to carry, offering Kenshin a bow just as deep as the one he’d given Katsura. “Your reputation precedes you.”

Kenshin returned the bow slightly deeper, even if such a gesture could never fully express his gratitude. “As does yours, especially for the service you’ve done for me and my family.”

Katsura smiled and retreated towards the door. “No need for formality,” he said, waving off any bows before they could be made. “I will see myself out.”

“Yours was only one of countless families impacted by the traitor.” Shishio shook his head as the door slid closed behind Katsura, that fervent light never leaving his eyes. “Disposing of him was my pleasure.” He gestured toward the spare cushion. “I would have done it gladly even if you and your family had never been involved.”

“Of course.” Kenshin knelt on the cushion as Shishio did the same, setting his katana down next to him. “But even with the Yaminobu taken care of, had you not discovered the traitor, there likely would have been further attempts on my family in order to draw me out.” He inclined his head. “You have my thanks, and my family’s as well.”

This seemed to please Shishio; he bowed his head in acknowledgement and picked up his pipe again. 

“Do you mind if I smoke?” He held the pipe out to Kenshin, his long fingers seeming to barely touch the wood and filigreed metal. “If you would care to join me, I’m sure they can find you a pipe.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.” Kenshin shook his head. “But please go ahead.”

“The sake, then.” Shishio gestured to the bottle and cups on the tray table between them. “I understand it’s very expensive, which ought to mean that it’s very good.” 

Kenshin quirked an eyebrow at that. “Then I suppose it would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

He had learned that much from the best, after all. 

Shishio drew at the pipe, the ember in the tiny bowl glowing briefly orange, and exhaled a thin stream of smoke from his mouth. “It would be an honor for the legendary Battousai to join me in at least one of my little vices.”

“The honor is all mine,” Kenshin murmured, as Shishio reached for the bottle and poured two cups. He picked up one of them and slid the other over to Kenshin, who raised it slightly. “Cheers.”

The sake did taste better than anything Kenshin might have bought for a few coins at one of the neighborhood pubs, and the semi-sweet notes lingered on his tongue after he had set the cup down.

A shame then, really, that he wouldn’t have the opportunity to take some back to Mount Atago, even if he did learn the name of the manufacturer. 

“It’s quite good,” he offered. “And never available where I’m staying.”

“Available or otherwise, I’d likely never be able to afford it.” Shishio refilled their cups, deciding to sip his leisurely rather than empty it at a single gulp this time. “But being the head of a revolution clearly has its privileges. And I do appreciate my little creature comforts.”

They drank in silence for a few moments, and this time, Kenshin refilled their cups. If the sake truly was that expensive then he would never be forgiven for leaving even the dregs in the bottle. 

“If I might ask a question…?” he started, and Shishio gestured for him to continue. “What made you suspect him?”

Shishio smiled the smile of a mako shark. 

“He was too comfortable.” He tilted his sake cup slightly to the right, then slightly to the left, before taking the smallest of contemplative sips. “Too at ease for a man in his position.” 

Kenshin frowned. “He was, wasn’t he?”

Always more concerned with where his next drink or meal or woman would come from, and always encouraging Kenshin to lighten up a little, relax a little, visit a brothel at least once. Perhaps crack a smile. 

Now he couldn’t help but wonder if it had all been a ploy to get him to lower his guard. 

Probably.

Shishio set his cup down. “But perhaps it is simply in my nature to be suspicious.”

The bitter feeling didn’t wash away with the taste of sake. Kenshin set the cup down and looked at Shishio. “And so one night, you felt compelled to follow him?”

“As I said.” Shishio’s smile remained predatory. “I’m inclined towards suspicion.” He sipped almost delicately at his own sake. “And, as usual, my suspicions ended up being confirmed.”

His expression darkened suddenly. “He was a filth-slimed traitor, and I relished killing him. I’d have felt guiltier about crushing a cockroach.”

They drank in silence for a moment, then Shishio spoke again.

“Did Katsura-san tell you what sort of a message I delivered to the Bakufu with Iizuka’s death?” Shishio’s eyes glinted. “The details?”

“Only that he relished writing the letter of condemnation.” Kenshin eyed him steadily. “And that it said the Ishin Shishi deal more harshly with traitors than with our enemies.”

“Oh, I’m certain it did.” Shishio’s smile became almost gleeful. “But not nearly as eloquently as the one I wrote. And not in nearly so unmistakable a fashion.”

He paused for a moment, as though he were some sort of rakugo storyteller allowing suspense and anticipation to build in his audience.

“I left his body in the street where he fell,” he said in a hushed voice. “Katsura-san’s letter tucked into his kimono and ‘traitor’ carved into his face so that his crime could never be hidden.”

“Ah.”

Certainly that would leave a strong message to both the Bakufu and anyone else who might have considered selling them out for a handful of coins. And Kenshin had left far too many corpses in the street (or in the gutters or on the steps or anywhere and everywhere), letters of condemnation scattered over their bodies. 

He had relished killing the Yaminobu one by one, and had left them in their damned forest to be discovered by agents of the Bakufu.

Was this any different then?

He wasn’t sure. And he was in no position to pass that sort of judgment on the man who had succeeded him.

“Certainly that would leave a message,” he said slowly. “One that should discourage anyone else from trying the same thing.”

The glint in Shishio’s eyes seemed to brighten at that.

“Katsura-san took a bit of convincing,” he said. “He seemed to think it was a trifle extreme. But, all due respect to the man…” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “He’s an idealist, not a hitokiri. Not like you and I. He has no real appreciation for the artistry of death, the many ways to send a message.”

Kenshin reached for his sake cup, but it was empty, as was the bottle. For a moment, he entertained the absurd idea of asking for another - surely someone would bring them one - but it wasn’t that he particularly wanted to drink more of the obscenely expensive sake.

He had sent many of his own messages, not just in his hitokiri work and not just with the Yaminobu, but in Choshu and nearly every night in the streets of Kyoto. Streets and alleys, decks of ships and steps of shrines, and fields and forests had run red with the blood he had spilled. 

Unlike that first year as a hitokiri, when he had kept meticulous track of the numbers, he could no longer count the dead.

His throat felt very parched.

“I believe many more messages will be sent,” he heard himself say, “if the war continues to go on as it has.”

“It will,” Shishio said without a shred of doubt in his voice. “This war is going to continue for years.” He picked up the sake bottle and frowned at its emptiness. “We’re going to need more of this.” He stood and headed towards the door.

Kenshin watched him go without a word, uncertain of when the meeting had turned into a social call but not entirely willing to end it just yet.

Shishio returned a moment later, accompanied by a woman bearing a tray which she set down before leaving. On the tray rested not only two more bottles of sake, but an assortment of pickles, some senbei rice crackers, and a dish of what appeared to be dried and shredded squid.

It seemed they were going to settle in for the evening.

The hour of the rat somehow gave way to the ox as they worked their way through the snacks and both bottles of sake. They discussed the war and the streets of Kyoto and even what had happened in Choshu, and at some point, the same woman returned and replenished the sake and the snack dishes.

Somewhere between sake refills, they abandoned the formality of sitting seiza and ended up cross-legged on their respective cushions. Shishio refilled his kiseru pipe at least once, the steady stream of smoke continuing to curl lazily into the air.

“I think there might be a reason this sake’s so expensive,” he said at some point. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to stand up anytime soon.”

“The rice crackers.” Kenshin gestured toward the dish, though they had eaten its contents down to crumbs. 

Shishio peered into the empty dish for a long moment, then arched a single thin eyebrow at Kenshin. “What rice crackers?”

“They absorb sake.” Kenshin shrugged. “Probably.”

A distant voice in the back of his head reminded Kenshin that he probably had rice crackers for brains, but he muffled the voice with a few pieces of shredded squid.

“Well, we’ve gone and absorbed them.” Shishio looked critically at his sake cup for a moment, then shrugged and took another sip.

Kenshin chewed on another mouthful of shredded squid. 

“I wonder if the Bakufu’s sake is as fine?” Shishio mused, holding up the tiny cup and turning it slightly. 

“Just as fine, if not more so.” Kenshin’s expression darkened. “They’ve taxed the rice right out of people’s bowls, giving them an ample supply to produce the finest.”

“Spoken like Katsura-san’s own protege,” Shishio replied with a wry smile. “He never misses an opportunity to turn a convincing phrase about the evils of the Bakufu.”

Kenshin waved that off. “I’ve never needed convincing about the evils of the Bakufu.” 

“Oh, they’re going to lose, of course,” Shishio replied laconically, with another draw on his pipe. “Because they don’t have swordsmen like you or me on their side.”

He poured more sake for the both of them as he spoke. Kenshin eyed it warily, wondering if he really needed any more to drink, but reached for the cup anyway. 

“The battle goes to the strongest,” Shishio continued, “but they’re going to be stubborn about losing.”

“The Tokugawa have held power for over two hundred years.” Kenshin raised his cup, and they drank at the same time. “And now they’re willing to turn on their own people to continue to hold onto it.”

“Of course they are.” Shishio set down his cup. “If you were threatened with the loss of power by a group of upstart radicals who wanted to tear down everything you’d built to keep yourself comfortable, you’d fight tooth and nail to cling to your power, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose I would.” Kenshin sipped at the sake a bit more slowly now. “Or perhaps I wouldn’t have starved and tortured my own people, which might have kept them from becoming upstart radicals.” He shrugged. “Too late for that now.”

Shishio laughed. “And now they’re astonished to learn that for all their show of strength against peasants and farmers, their army can’t contend with real swordsmen.” He shook his head. “It’s the way of the world. The strong survive, the weak die. And they’re just beginning to realize how weak they are.”

The hour of the ox gave way to the tiger, and Kenshin’s head was beginning to thrum with far too much expensive drink. 

Between the two of them, they polished off the last of the sake and the snacks, made a show of very carefully easing their swords into their belts, and pulled off extremely sloppy bows.

“Let’s hope that tomorrow night will be an interesting one,” Shishio smiled as he slid the door open for Kenshin. “Not that tonight wasn’t an honor, but you can certainly understand how dull the nights can be when there’s no work to be done.”

Kenshin glanced at him. “In my current role, there are never dull nights.”

“Really?” Shishio’s eyebrows lifted in interest. “Then perhaps it’s time I asked for a promotion as well.”

Perhaps it was the effects of so much sake, but Kenshin couldn’t think of how one was meant to reply to that. 

Finally he said, “I doubt Katsura-san is looking to fill your position again so soon.” For some reason, he felt compelled to add, “And I can’t go back to it. They recognize me in the streets now.”

Shishio looked inordinately pleased to hear that.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to do my best to live up to the standard you’ve set.” He bowed fractionally. “Perhaps the next time we meet, I’ll have another interesting tale to tell you.”

“Perhaps the next time we meet, the sake will be of an even higher quality.” Kenshin returned the bow before starting off down the street.

He took care to avoid any of the main roads, slipping through alleys and side streets and even the grounds of a small, well-tended shrine. He was in no mood for any further confrontations; his head hurt now, and he had a feeling that would make his swordwork unnecessarily rough.

The facade of the Yazuya greeted him without incident, and he slipped inside and up to his room without alerting any of the staff. Before long, he had settled against the far wall, leaving the futon folded in the corner, and then he was off into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> The third captain of the Shinsengumi is, of course, our beloved and spidery-haired Saitou Hajime. And now you've met Shishio too. I wonder... how that could change things?
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I've gotta be totally honest, fam: the sudden and tragic death of Chadwick Boseman has completely gutted me. I'm absolutely shocked and my heart aches for both his family and the millions of children who finally had the chance to look up to, emulate, and cherish their own Black superhero. I'm just... I'm gutted by this. 
> 
> With that in mind, I really wasn't sure I'd get the chapter up today, but I do so value my readership and your wonderful, encouraging, often very funny or perceptive comments. Please continue laying them on me. I love each and every one of them, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
> 
> Be well, fam. Wakanda Forever.


	17. Apprentice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How old are you, anyway?” Hiko asked one day over dinner. 
> 
> He’d guessed Kenshin’s age to be about five summers, perhaps six, but the boy was so small and scrawny that it was impossible to tell.
> 
> Kenshin paused, rice halfway to his mouth, and lowered his bowl. Hiko was prepared for the boy to tell him that he didn’t actually know how old he was, but after a moment, he said:
> 
> “Seven summers.” He studied his rice bowl a bit too carefully. “Kaachan said I was born in the sixth month.”
> 
> Hiko sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Hanten : padded coat for winter  
> Hatsu Tanjo : basically a 1st birthday celebration. More detail in the notes  
> Tokaido : the road from Edo to Kyoto  
> Daimyo : feudal lords  
> Obon : Buddhist festival honoring one’s ancestors

**Founding year of Keiou  
(November 1865 - April 1866)**

Not for the first time, Hiko sat outside his house and marveled at how thoroughly life - and one’s outlook upon it - could change in such a comparatively short amount of time.

For a man who had so recently prized his own solitude enough to have made his home on a mountain simply to avoid having to interact with others, he had a great deal of company nowadays. He had never enjoyed the company of other people (and so far as the vast majority of people were concerned, he still didn’t) but he found himself quite content with the people who currently surrounded him. 

Tomoe, whose insightful intelligence still managed to catch him off his guard sometimes and whose cooking had made a dramatic improvement in his quality of life, was now squatting beside the stream diligently washing clothes. Kenichi, whom she had been teaching to recognize Hiko as Ojiji - he still didn’t quite know how to approach that - crawled through the grass beside her, occasionally having to be picked up and placed farther back from the water.

He could see the both of them from where he sat, and occasionally he looked up from his work (he was reweaving a rabbit snare for the coming winter) to satisfy himself that they were still there.

Enishi had gone down to the village after the morning meal to run a few errands. In fact, Hiko was just beginning to suspect that it was about time for him to return when he caught sight of the boy coming up the path.

“Look at this!” Enishi called as he drew closer, stumbling only slightly under the weight of the shopping pole. He was getting stronger, certainly, but obviously still benefited from being made to run errands up and down the mountain. 

The boy set the pole, and the two buckets hanging from it, down on the ground more roughly than necessary and pulled a crumpled broadsheet from his kimono, which he nearly shoved into Hiko’s face.

“Look!” he said gleefully. “Two ryo now! He’s worth two ryo!”

Hiko snorted as he took the crumpled paper and read. The laughable and dramatically incorrect description of his idiot apprentice hadn’t changed - they apparently still thought he was seven shaku tall and could kill a man just by looking at him - but the Bakufu had indeed doubled the bounty on his head.

“That’ll be because of the Yaminobu,” Hiko said dryly as he handed the broadsheet back to Enishi. “The Shogun’s beginning to fear him. Not afraid enough, of course, but clearly they’re starting to come to their senses.”

“That would buy two koku of rice!” Enishi bounced on the balls of his feet. “That’s two years’ worth of food.” He glanced over toward the stream, then looked back at Hiko, expression sly. “We could do a lot with two ryo.”

Hiko looked over at the boy out of the corners of his eyes and suppressed a laugh. “Are you suggesting we turn him in?” He shook his head. “You’d better not voice that little brainstorm too loudly around your sister.”

“You’re right,” Enishi said immediately. “We should wait until they’re asking for at least five or six ryo.”

This time Hiko couldn’t suppress the laugh.

“Bring the shopping inside, boy.” He chuckled, shaking his head again. “Do it quickly enough and I might not even tell Kenshin about your suggestion the next time he comes home.”

Hiko briefly wondered when that might be. Likely not until the spring, unless the snow fell extremely late that winter. The thought made him frown.

The boy did as he was directed, but just before he stepped inside the house, he added, “I’m going to slide this into his futon so that it’s waiting for him.”

Heaving an exaggerated and plainly audible sigh, Hiko went back to the snare. The boy’s sense of humor was very similar to his own, and he found that he didn’t mind at all. Still, the thought that his idiot apprentice would be gone until at least the thaw cast a cloud over his good mood. 

The war was far from over. 

The Bakufu would not relinquish their position voluntarily; they would fight to the last drop of blood in the last man who served them in order to cling to their rule. The battles would range far and wide across the country, each more bitter than its predecessor. And even though Hiko knew Kenshin’s skills were too finely honed for him to be cut down by any swordsman or spear-wielder, the fact was that wars were increasingly being fought with weapons that permitted ignorant and untrained troops to equal the most skilled of warriors.

With a much less audible (and much more heartfelt) sigh, he tied off the snare and reached down for the jug of sake beside him. 

Had he made another mistake in giving Kenshin permission to return to the war?

The door banged open abruptly and Enishi stepped outside, chewing on a stick of anko dango he must have purchased in the village. 

“Why do they say he can fly?” he said through a mouthful of red bean paste and sticky rice dumpling. “I’ve never seen him do anything that looks like flying.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered why the style is called Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?” Hiko tossed off his sake and looked sideways at Enishi. “Weren’t you watching the two of us spar? You’ve seen his Ryutsuisen, at least.”

“It’s not really flying though.” Enishi chomped on another dango. “More like… really impressive jumping.”

“Of course it is.” Hiko poured himself another saucer of sake. “But such finely honed skills always appear magical to lesser men.”

Enishi grinned at that.

Hiko sipped as he lectured the boy. “The more physically powerful swordsman does not always win. The essence of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is not power, but speed. Speed of hand, speed of foot, and speed of mind.” He looked the boy in the eyes. “When I trained Kenshin to move with the supreme speed of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, his legs grew strong enough to let him leap twice his own height into the air. And when he discovered that he could run up walls and spring off of them, I could barely keep him on the ground.” 

He snorted. “No ordinary man could even come close to that, and so no ordinary man would see it as anything other than flying.”

“How old was he?” Enishi polished off the last dango. “When he started running up walls and stuff?”

“Eight summers?” Hiko’s brow furrowed as he thought back. It had been early on in Kenshin’s apprenticeship, but he couldn’t recall precisely. “Perhaps nine? It was the focus of most of our early training. As I said, speed is the core of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. Everything else builds on it, so it has to be mastered first.”

Abruptly Enishi sighed and staggered dramatically over to one of the tree stumps, plopping down with chin in hand. “Why does it take him so long to learn anything? He said Soryusen took him six or seven years. Years! And now running takes a year.”

“Because mastery - real mastery - takes time and effort.” Hiko looked sourly at Enishi. “It means never being satisfied with anything less than absolute perfection. It means practicing day in and day out, week after week and month after month, in all weather and under any conditions, until you can consistently and flawlessly do the thing you intend to do.” He snorted. “Of course it took him years to learn. Most other people couldn’t have even come close in an entire lifetime.”

Enishi raised an eyebrow. “Bet you never mentioned that last part to him.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “His head didn’t need to be inflated.”

Enishi returned the expression. “Right, because he’s such a braggart.”

“Because no apprentice needs to develop an ego.” He smiled a tight and - though Enishi obviously wouldn’t have understood why - ironic smile. “Only a master can be permitted to know just how powerful he is.”

“Well, how long is he going to be an apprentice for?” Enishi frowned. “It’s almost been nine years, hasn’t it? And he’s fighting in a war. Doesn’t that kind of mean he’s passed his apprenticeship?”

Damn.

When Hiko had first taken Kenshin in, the way in which his apprentice would achieve full mastery of the style had seemed fitting and appropriate. After all, Hiko himself had tried and failed to live the ideals of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, so passing the mantle on to a new master who might succeed where he had failed seemed only right. 

And besides, if he were being honest with himself, he’d had nothing to live for.

The lesson he’d learned at the expense of his own master’s life had been that when staring into the face of death, the value of one’s own life would become clearer than ever. That in the instant the nine mouths of the dragon opened to devour him, every reason he’d ever had to keep on living had become as sharp and clear as if seen through the eyes of an eagle.

And now…

Now, he had more reasons to live than he had ever even dreamt of having.

“His apprenticeship ends when I say it does,” he replied, perhaps a bit gruffly. “And why are you so concerned with it?”

Enishi looked taken aback for a moment, but then slapped a hand over his heart. “Ouch.”

Hiko rolled his eyes and snorted, a measure of relief washing over him. The boy was a nuisance; a moody and temperamental little troublemaker. However, he also had a sense of humor that, like his sister’s, meshed well with Hiko’s own. And, like fungus on a rotting log, he was beginning to grow on Hiko.

“I’m not concerned with it,” Enishi said abruptly. “But nine years seems like a long time, especially when he’s been a hitokiri, and he’s married, and he has a son.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed into the distance for a moment. “Who almost crawled into the water just now.” He snorted. “Babies are so dumb.”

“So are children.” Hiko snorted in return. “But fortunately, his mother realizes how ignorant he is of his own mortality.” He gestured towards the stream, where Tomoe had just set her son down a comfortable distance away from the water’s edge. 

Hiko gave it a minute at the outside before she would have to do so again.

“How much more does he have to learn?” Enishi asked. “Kenshin, not the dumb baby. Nine years _is_ a long time, even if you don’t want to acknowledge it, and that Soryusen looked pretty advanced.”

Hiko’s expression soured. Why wouldn’t the boy just leave well enough alone and stop asking stupid - and inconvenient - questions?

“That was just the basic Soryusen.” Hiko decided to take refuge in the finer aspects of the style rather than answer they boy’s real question. “The Soryusen Ikazuchi reverses the strikes. And there are other variations as well, none of which he’s mastered.”

He set down his sake saucer, which he had been holding for some time without realizing it, and went on. “Besides, I didn’t even start teaching him battoujutsu until he’d been training for four or five years. No time limit can be placed on true mastery, boy. It comes in its own due time, if it comes at all.”

Enishi sighed and poked at the dirt with the dango stick. “So he’ll be a stupid apprentice for another ten stupid years, even though he’s off doing other stuff and you’re making stupid rabbit traps.”

Why would the boy not leave the subject alone? 

The last thing Hiko wanted was to have to decide how, when, and whether to allow Kenshin to complete his training. Particularly when the decision was being pushed on him by an eleven-year-old child with no understanding of just what he was getting into.

“What exactly is your goal, boy?” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have some sort of personal stake in when my idiot apprentice attains his mastery? Or is this just an ill-considered means of passing the time?”

Enishi glowered up at him, sucked in his breath, and then the words tumbled out in a rush. “I want to learn.”

Hiko stared at Enishi for a very long moment.

The idea had occurred to him, naturally; it was a real solution to the boy’s need for direction and discipline, and it would serve as an ideal means to channel his intense emotions. But it was the height of irony for Enishi to suggest it just when Hiko had been agonizing over the ultimate end of his first apprentice’s training. Aside from the fact that taking on more than one apprentice had never been done in the three-hundred-year-long history of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, he would have to make the impossible decision of Enishi’s mastery as well as Kenshin’s.

Yet Kenshin had achieved so much without having attained full mastery of the style. Was it unthinkable that a solution might present itself in the time it took for the war to end and for Enishi’s training to reach a stage where he might be capable of such achievements as well? 

And in the end, had Hiko’s own hard-won knowledge about the value of his own life been worth anything at all?

“Why?” he finally asked, in a quiet voice that did not feel entirely like his own.

“Why?” Enishi repeated, expression incredulous. “Because the Yaminobu beat me up and left me for dead.” His face darkened. “Because they kidnapped my sister and her dumb baby, and I couldn’t do a single thing to stop them, and they probably would’ve enjoyed killing my sister and even her dumb baby, just because they could.”

He surged to his feet, hands balled into tight fists. “Because they were the scariest men I’ve ever known, but I watched you and Kenshin cut through them like they were tofu.” He took a deep breath. “Because _Tatsumi_ was the scariest man I’ve ever known, and he was big and mean and old, and Kenshin is none of those things, and yet he was able to face Tatsumi down and rescue my sister and her baby before Tatsumi could hurt them.”

He glared at Hiko. “That’s why.”

Hiko gazed at the boy for what felt like hours, unsurprised by his answer but thunderstruck nonetheless. 

He had never given any real credence to the idea of fate, preferring to assume control of - and responsibility for - his own destiny. But to hear the boy state so clearly the very goals that he himself had had for Kenshin when he’d first taken him in, particularly when he’d been coming around to the idea of taking Enishi on as an apprentice for weeks now, was like being tapped on the shoulder by the gods as a patient but insistent reminder of who was, in fact, in control.

Finally he nodded, slowly but emphatically.

“I suppose there can’t be a better reason than that,” he said evenly, his face becoming stern. “But I don’t think you’re actually prepared for the sort of effort and commitment you’re going to have to put into it if I agree to teach you.”

Which he supposed he already had. Consequences be damned.

...

“Hey, Neechan, guess what?” Enishi said, over a simple lunch of onigiri stuffed with dried fish and pickles. “Hiko-san’s going to teach me Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu!”

Tomoe stilled, halfway through feeding a spoonful of mashed rice to Kenichi, and Hiko rolled his eyes and glared at Enishi.

“I never agreed to that,” he growled. “Because you never convinced me that you would actually follow through with it. You’ve been griping about how long it’s taking Kenshin to master the style, and I’ve yet to be persuaded that you have the patience for it.”

“You sounded like you agreed to it outside!” Enishi shot back. “You said my reasons were good. You said-”

“I said you had good reasons, but this isn’t something to be undertaken lightly.” He held up a hand to cut the boy off before he could become indignant. “You have no idea of the sacrifices involved in training.”

No apprentice of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu ever did.

Kenichi shoved the spoon aside and turned his head away, and Tomoe used the opportunity to say, “I was unaware that any of this had been discussed at all.”

“It was right before lunch.” Enishi folded his arms. “It wasn’t like we were keeping a big secret from you, Neechan.”

Tomoe looked at him levelly. “I would hope not.”

“We’re going to have to begin with the most fundamental basics,” Hiko admonished the boy. “You’ll be doing more running over the next few months than you’ve probably done in the past five years.”

“See, Neechan? Lots of running.” Enishi reached for the last onigiri in his dish. “Running’s good, right? You’ve always said I have a lot of extra energy.”

Tomoe didn’t respond right away, instead taking the time to mop the rice mash off Kenichi’s face and the front of his baggy little kimono.

Finally she said, “I was under the impression that an apprenticeship agreement is drawn between a boy’s father and the potential teacher.” She looked from Hiko to Enishi. “And Otousan isn’t here.”

“That’s for an apprenticeship in the trades,” Hiko responded, one eyebrow arching at Tomoe. “But as his father isn’t here, and as you’ve raised him, perhaps you ought to stand in.”

Tomoe held his gaze, expression unreadable, before abruptly picking up Kenichi and placing him in Hiko’s lap. “Here, go to Ojiji.” 

Hiko didn’t bother to correct her, merely putting an arm around the baby as she collected the dishes around the hearth and stepped into the kitchen space, stopping briefly to slip into her zori.

“Neechan?” Enishi said through a mouthful of shredded fish and rice.

Tomoe placed the dishes in the washing bucket and spoke with her back to them. “I was also under the impression that my husband hasn’t finished his apprenticeship yet, and Hiko-san said there’s only ever one apprentice in Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.”

Enishi groaned and flopped backward on the floor. “It’s the apprenticeship that never ends.”

“Your brother made a fairly good case for why he should learn,” Hiko said as Kenichi clutched at the front of his gi with both tiny hands. He deliberately chose not to pursue the issue of a single apprentice; there were too many ways for that discussion to end in disaster. “And, as I’m sure you’ll agree, he would benefit from something constructive to focus his energy on.”

Tomoe nodded. “This much is true. But this is not a decision to be taken lightly.”

Enishi made a frustrated sound and rolled over onto his stomach, face against the floor.

“And flopping around like a landed fish isn’t going to hurry me along at all.” Tomoe didn’t turn away from the washing bucket. “Which I think you know.”

It was an unfamiliar situation for Hiko. Never before had he ever even imagined needing to solicit permission to do anything, and yet he knew that if he were going to teach the boy, it would have to be with Tomoe’s consent.

“So give her time, boy,” he grunted to Enishi. He eyed Tomoe, considering how best to approach the coming discussion while recapturing Kenichi, who had been trying to crawl off of his lap. “And meanwhile, think about what we’ve said.”

Kenichi babbled up at him, and Hiko looked down at him with a half-smirk. “Exactly what I was going to say, bozu.”

...

That evening, some time after the shogi board had been put away and Enishi had flopped into his futon and drifted off, Hiko settled outside on one of the tree stumps with a jug of sake and two cups while Tomoe nursed Kenichi to sleep indoors.

The door slid shut quietly behind him, and Tomoe joined him outside, bundled up in Hiko’s patched and worn hanten, the very one that Kenshin had found for her what now seemed like ages ago.

“It feels like the snow will come very soon,” she whispered, breath clouding on the crisp air.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Hiko looked up at the cloudless sky, the moon and stars clearly visible in the chilly night. “But we’re prepared. If the snow started to fall tomorrow, we’d be fine.”

He poured them each a cup of sake and held one out to her.

She cupped it in both hands, inclining her head in thanks, and seated herself on the opposite tree stump. 

“I wonder how he’s doing?” she murmured, eyes fixed on the moon. 

“He’s fine,” Hiko said, hoping his words would reassure the both of them. “I taught him how to fight in winter weather. He’ll be leaping around while the rest of them are struggling to pull their boots out of the snow.”

He paused, taking a sip of sake. “Still, it’ll be some time before we hear from him. I doubt he’s going to be sending any letters.”

“I know.” Her gaze dropped into her sake cup. “And I knew he was unlikely to make it back here before the first snow, but I hope he can at least make it back for Kenichi’s Hatsu Tanjo.”

“I’ll just be pleased when he’s home for good.” Hiko looked out at the darkened forest. “I know the war won’t cooperate with any of our wishes, and it’s likely to drag on for at least a year or two.” He turned to regard Tomoe. “And so I’ll be happy when you don’t have to worry about him anymore.” 

Tomoe looked at him “Do you worry about him?”

“What do you think?” Hiko scowled into his sake. 

It was just like Tomoe to be able to penetrate to the heart of what he had said and stop him dead in his tracks with a simply phrased question. And when it was such a simple question, asked so directly, there was only so much he could do to avoid it.

Which was to say, nothing at all.

“Of course I worry about him.” He sighed. “He wants to fight against human nature. He’ll be fighting that fight for the rest of his life, long after this war is over.”

Tomoe sipped slowly at her sake. “I worry about what the war will do to his mind. Especially now.” Another soft sigh, her breath puffing into the air. “Now that we have a son.”

“Yes.” Hiko’s expression darkened. “I’ve thought about that as well.”

He drained his own sake cup and refilled them both. “I don’t imagine he’s going to come through it unscathed,” he said heavily. “Just because he’s not a hitokiri any longer doesn’t mean that he’s not going to see and experience terrible things.”

He turned a very piercing look on Tomoe. “But last time, he had nothing to come back to. This time, he has everything. And that may make all the difference.”

Though she tried to hide it with a quick duck of her head, Hiko caught the faint flush that warmed her cheeks.

It was true, though. When Kenshin had fled the Kyoto fire, he hadn’t even known whether he’d be welcome back on Mount Atago. Now, he had a home and a family to look forward to seeing again. Any man would be sustained by such a promise.

They sat quietly for a moment, the pleasantly crisp night air ruffling their hair and the sake tasting exceptionally fine, before Hiko broke the silence again.

“You have reservations about me teaching your brother.”

Tomoe looked at him, expression unreadable. “Should I not?”

“You should at the very least tell me why.” Though her cup was only half empty, Hiko poured a splash of sake into it. “I may be able to set your mind at ease if I know.”

He had a fairly good idea of what Tomoe’s reservations were, of course; his idiot apprentice had probably scandalized her with tales of how harsh a taskmaster he’d been and how dangerous his training methods had been. 

Ridiculous, all of it - Kenshin hadn’t died, had he? And hadn’t he gone on to become the second-greatest swordsman in the country?

“You’re making a face,” Tomoe observed calmly.

Hiko scowled and took another sip. “The boy can benefit from what I have to give him. His anger, his intensity… I can give him a real means of harnessing them. Give him something to strive for.”

“It sounds as if you might benefit equally in this arrangement.” Tomoe lifted the sake cup to her lips, looked at Hiko for a moment, and drank.

For a time, perhaps Tomoe would be right in her assessment. Hiko wouldn’t argue her point; he did find the boy amusing, and he did look forward to being able to teach him something of real use. But the specter of the manner in which a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu apprenticeship ended would loom ever larger on the horizon, and he had realized some time ago that such an end would not benefit him as he had once thought it might.

But he had no answer. All he could do was to try to give himself time to find one, if such a thing was possible.

“And you still don’t like it.” 

“Are you relieving Kenshin of his apprenticeship then?” Tomoe’s gaze returned to her sake cup. Very quietly, she added, “The two of you worked so hard…”

It was almost supernatural, the way that Tomoe had of seeing through people. Through him and his idiot apprentice in particular. Nothing seemed to escape her. He had even thought briefly that she might have known - or at least glimpsed - the truth about the succession of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. 

But if that had been the case, she surely wouldn’t permit him to teach the boy…

Still, she knew that he cared about Kenshin. And that the two of them had indeed worked quite diligently on repairing the fracture that his idiot apprentice’s departure had caused between them.

“No.” Hiko’s voice was quiet, and a small sigh escaped him. “No, I’m not turning him out. Whatever else he may be, he’s still my idiot apprentice and I won’t take that from him.” 

He tossed back his sake in preparation for what he was about to say next. 

“Nor anything else the two of us have worked on.”

Tomoe sat with that for a moment. Finally she said, “How would you handle having two?”

Hiko’s face relaxed somewhat. This, at least, was a simple enough question to answer.

“I don’t see it being any sort of difficulty during the first couple of years.” He shrugged and poured himself another cup. “He won’t be fit enough to undergo real training until at least the third year. Before that, he’ll need to unlearn poor habits and build up his strength and speed. Kenshin wasn’t fully conditioned for quite some time, as I recall.”

Tomoe nodded. 

Abruptly she stood and turned away, tilting her face up toward the moon. “The first man I ever loved died on the streets of Kyoto, attempting to fight in a war he had no business being part of and didn’t even have strong feelings about. I used to think if he had been better trained, perhaps he might have lived, but…”

She turned and looked steadily at Hiko, her face very pale in the moonlight. “I realize that anyone who has the misfortune of going against the second man I love doesn’t stand a chance. Not really.”

Hiko had not been ready for this kind of reminiscence. His earlier relief had ebbed away, to be replaced by a sort of worried anticipation of what this preternaturally insightful young woman might say next.

Perhaps she still blamed herself for her first young man’s death. Or perhaps she blamed Hiko, and the fact that he had been the one to teach Kenshin the deadly skills he had used to kill the poor devil. Perhaps she blamed him, and that was why she would not permit him to teach Enishi as well - she would never want her own brother to be responsible for a loss like the one she had suffered…

“At Enishi’s age,” she asked suddenly, “would Kenshin have stood any chance against the Yaminobu?”

Hiko arched an eyebrow at that, but gave the matter a moment’s careful thought nonetheless.

“It’s difficult to say,” he said finally. “I hadn’t taught him battoujutsu by his eleventh summer, and so he would have been without one of his greatest strengths.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Still, they would have underestimated him at that age. And by that time, he’d been training for four years already. During his eleventh year, I watched him single-handedly defeat a group of six forest bandits with nothing but a bokutou. So, yes. I would say that he would at least have had a good chance.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “He never told me that.”

Hiko laughed softly and poured them each another cup of sake, and Tomoe settled back down on the tree stump, cup in hand. 

“We used to walk everywhere,” he said, sitting back and crossing one leg over the other knee. “But occasionally, we’d look for someone to give us a ride on longer journeys. And on one trip along the Tokaido, we ended up traveling with a merchant who wanted protection from robbers on the road.”

Hiko smiled to remember the man - round-faced and friendly, but thoroughly terrified of the prospect of bandits who might not only steal everything he carried, but likely kill him as well purely for the sake of expediency.

“So we agreed, and I told Kenshin he could handle any trouble that came up. And when the trouble did come up, it was an excellent opportunity for me to see him use what I’d taught him in a practical situation.” He smiled. “He handled himself very well. Not a scratch on him, and the merchant made it to Edo without incident. Though he did seem very wary of Kenshin for the rest of the trip.” 

Tomoe raised both eyebrows at that, then tipped back the sake cup. “He doesn’t talk much about his upbringing unless pressed. Why is that?”

Hiko sighed heavily and refilled her cup yet again. “He doesn’t talk much about anything unless pressed,” he muttered, then looked over at Tomoe. “And nor do you, for that matter. Some people are just happier on their own.”

A small smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. She took a tentative sip from her cup and blew out a breath. 

“Are you going to go easy on him or are you planning on kicking him off cliffs into the deep water below?”

Hiko snorted with sudden mirth as he realized that she was giving her consent. And yet again, he felt the curious sensation of not altogether minding being surrounded by people. Provided, of course, that they were the people he had chosen to let into his home and his life.

“I’ve never gone easy on anyone in my life,” he said dryly, the barest hint of a smile on his face. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll make sure he knows how to swim before I kick him off the cliff.”

...

“You’re shifting your grip again.” Hiko reached out and caught Enishi’s bokutou with one hand in mid-swing. “Don’t let a little thing like discomfort get in the way of your technique.”

He’d nearly forgotten just how tedious the first forays into training a new apprentice could be, he thought as he returned to where he’d been sitting. 

Enishi returned his hands to their proper position on the hilt of the bokutou, wincing as he did so, and took a deep breath, presumably to prepare himself to return to his exercises.

At this point, the boy’s training consisted solely of conditioning his body. Hiko had been right in his assumption that the boy’s Genbukan Ryu training had been fit only to teach him poor habits, and so he’d needed to wipe the slate clean before beginning in earnest. And so, apart from having Enishi run flat-out for as long as possible to build up his leg strength, he’d also been watching the boy swing a bokutou repeatedly into the trunk of a towering oak tree. 

This was why Enishi had been wincing; sword calluses took some time to develop, and right now he only had blisters.

“Move your feet,” Hiko called out sharply from his stump. “Haven’t I been telling you that the power in your swing doesn’t come from your arms?”

“Yes,” Enishi said through gritted teeth. “You’ve been saying that a lot.”

Hiko got to his feet, drew his sword, and moved in painstakingly slow motion through a basic kesagiri strike. “See how I step into the swing?” He demonstrated again, even more slowly. “How I pivot my hips to add power to the stroke?” He exaggerated the twist, performing the movement several times. “These details are everything.”

“Details are everything,” Enishi repeated under his breath, though this time he did pivot correctly into the swing. 

It was true that taking on an apprentice made one think particularly hard about the fundamentals of one’s chosen art. And he supposed that it was also helpful for the boy to be reminded of those fundamentals as often as possible. The trouble was, it made training extremely dull for Hiko.

Then again, it had been this dull in the beginning with Kenshin as well. And the tedium hadn’t lasted forever.

~~~  
~~~  
~~~

 _In the beginning, Hiko had been more interested in getting nourishment into Kenshin than anything else..._

He’d pressed third and fourth helpings of rice on the boy and watched him eat hungrily but cautiously, as though he was afraid that he was being offered the food as a test and that eating it too eagerly would result in punishment.

“I’m not going to take it away from you, boy,” he’d admonished Kenshin somewhat gruffly. “And I’m not going to beat you for eating it either, if you’re worried.”

Kenshin looked at him for a moment, then nodded and resumed eating his third bowl of rice. Perhaps somewhat less cautiously this time 

Hiko wanted very acutely to find the petty little countryside samurai who had instilled this fear into the boy and teach him what real fear was. Cut both hands off, possibly, and force him into beggarhood for the rest of his short life…

Speaking of hands, Kenshin’s had been torn to bloody shreds by digging several dozen graves in the hard, rocky soil of that field without the aid of a shovel. It took weeks for them to heal to Hiko’s satisfaction, as he was mainly worried about infection. 

The boy had flinched when Hiko had daubed stinging medicine onto the raw flesh, but he’d borne the pain surprisingly well. And, more encouragingly, once the bandages had come off and Hiko had inspected Kenshin’s hands, he’d found them considerably toughened by the experience. And, he supposed, by years of farm work.

“You’ve got good hands for kenjutsu,” he remarked, pressing his thumbs against Kenshin’s palms and finding the skin and muscle resilient. “Won’t take long to build up proper calluses.”

Kenshin studied his hands and flexed them experimentally, but if he was satisfied by what he saw, he kept it to himself. 

In fact, he had said very little to Hiko when he had begun training. He learned fast, mimicking Hiko’s movements with uncanny accuracy and surprising fluidity, but he never questioned or spoke out of turn. Indeed, he barely spoke at all. He merely obeyed Hiko’s instructions, and obeyed them well.

Still, Hiko wondered when he would come around and start speaking more than a word or two at a time. After all, he had had plenty to say in the field he had made into a graveyard. And most boys his age would be hard pressed to keep quiet for anywhere near as long.

“How old are you, anyway?” Hiko asked one day over dinner. 

He’d guessed Kenshin’s age to be about five summers, perhaps six, but the boy was so small and scrawny that it was impossible to tell.

Kenshin paused, rice halfway to his mouth, and lowered his bowl. Hiko was prepared for the boy to tell him that he didn’t actually know how old he was, but after a moment, he said:

“Seven summers.” He studied his rice bowl a bit too carefully. “Kaachan said I was born in the sixth month.”

Hiko sighed.

Just barely seven years alive, and the boy had already known misery beyond what any of the highborn scum who sat eating sweetmeats and ruling the country with terror would ever experience in their entire lives. 

The mother who had told him when he was born was dead, her body either flung into a ditch or burned for the risk of contagion. The village in which he had lived existed only in his memory. Even the other slaves who had known him in the caravan lay in shallow graves, unmarked save for the three river stones the boy had laid upon the graves of three girls whose lives had likewise been painful, miserable, and all too brief.

_That evening, after he’d put Kenshin to bed, he sat outside on his favorite stump and waited for the sake to chase away the pain of living in such a world…_

~~~  
~~~  
~~~

As they had predicted, Kenshin did not return before the thaw. 

Enishi’s training, however, progressed nicely throughout the winter months, particularly once the snow had begun to fall in earnest. Hiko had smiled a bit savagely and brought the boy out into the snow, where he’d run back and forth through the knee-deep drifts until, red-faced and sweating, his hanten long since tossed aside, he’d been unable to go on.

Tomoe merely reminded her brother to shake the snow off before venturing back inside. Hiko had chuckled at that.

He remembered going through this exact method with Kenshin every winter. Running through the snow as fast as he could, Hiko exhorting him to hoist his knees up higher than his waist in order to clear the top of the snow. It had all been in the service of strengthening Kenshin’s legs, giving him the muscle and the endurance needed to propel himself at the blinding speed of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

And it had worked.

The snow continued to fall at odd intervals during the following months, and Hiko insisted on bringing Enishi out to train with every fresh snowfall. The drifts had piled up to his waist before long, and his feet could no longer clear the surface of the snow no matter how high he hoisted his knees, but Hiko insisted on more speed regardless. 

And Enishi, to his own surprise, had improved steadily.

Evenings were generally enjoyable. 

Hiko continued to lose to Tomoe in shogi, though the games had begun to draw out longer and longer as he learned to avoid the mistakes she seemed to take the most pleasure in exploiting. Regrettably, Enishi’s training-induced exhaustion was not so complete that he couldn’t interject snide commentary here and there. 

Sometimes he’d even comment from the comfort of his futon.

Still, the harvest had been good, they had more than enough food laid by for Tomoe to continue turning out her characteristically excellent meals, and the repairs he had done to the thatched roof had held up even under the weight of more than two shaku of snow.

~~~  
~~~  
~~~

_He’d been sleeping more soundly than he remembered doing since taking Kenshin into his house four months prior…_

The hearth fire had been glowing, its embers banked and giving off a pleasant heat that filled the small house from wall to wall. His futon had been soft and comfortable, his dreams pleasant for the first time in what felt like years, and he’d been enjoying that halfway state between sleep and wakefulness, with no plans to rise any time soon.

“Shishou?” Kenshin’s voice broke into his consciousness, small but insistent. “Shishou? It’s snowing.”

“It’s winter,” Hiko mumbled into his futon. “Of course it’s snowing.”

In the past few weeks, Kenshin had begun to talk more - a welcome change from his earlier reticence - but now Hiko just wanted blessed, early morning silence.

Which, of course, didn’t happen.

“Yes, I know it snows in winter.” He could hear the frown in Kenshin’s voice. “But it’s… it’s really snowing.”

Hiko screwed up his eyes against the unwanted wave of consciousness that was threatening to overtake him. “I didn’t think you were lying, boy,” he managed with utmost patience. “I believe you.”

A sudden, stinging burst of cold slapped his face.

His eyes flew open instantly and he jerked upright, rubbing at his face and coming away with… snow?

“What in the…” He struggled into a sitting position angrily and looked around for the source of this sleep-ruining disturbance, finding only Kenshin standing there beside a small pile of snow.

In the middle of the house.

“I told you, Shishou.” Kenshin pointed to the pile of snow, then upward to the roof, and Hiko unwillingly dragged his gaze upward as well. “It’s snowing.”

A small, ragged patch of gray sky showed through the roof, framed by the thatch that had fallen in under the weight of the snow during the night.

Hiko closed his eyes again, searching for patience that he knew he didn’t have, and found just enough to avoid breaking out into a litany of loud and angry curses. This would mean a day’s worth of work, and not even pleasant work at that. However, his eyes opened again as a thought wormed its way into his dawning consciousness.

“Did you throw a snowball at me?”

“Me?” Kenshin grabbed the broom and began dutifully sweeping the snow toward the door. “I guess you’ll never know.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed as he got to his feet and began dressing for the work he had in front of him. “Then I _guess_ you’ll be the one going into the shed to find us more thatch once you’ve cleared that snow.”

It was somewhat encouraging, though, to see that the boy had grown comfortable enough in his new home to start playing a young boy’s tricks.

While Kenshin swept the snow out of the house and went to dig out the bundle of spare thatching material - far in the back of the sundries shed and no doubt buried beneath a small mountain of other miscellany - Hiko climbed up to the roof.

This was the more dangerous job - or at least it would have been for the boy, who might easily have fallen through the hole in the roof and landed headfirst on the wooden floor - and so Hiko suffered the cold and the still-falling snow in order to clear away the damaged thatch. The roof beams, of course, were unharmed, and while reweaving the thatch would be tedious and chilly work, at least it wouldn’t be difficult.

“Shishou?” Kenshin called from down below, and Hiko peered through the hole in the roof to see the boy standing there, a bundle of (thankfully dry) thatch at his feet. “Found it.”

“Good.” Hiko brushed snow out of his hair and vaulted to the ground, raising a small puff of snow as he landed. Trudging around to the doorway, he called in to Kenshin.

“Bring me the thatch.” He beckoned to the boy. “You’re going to stay inside and clean up the snow while I repair the hole.”

The boy did as he was told, handing over the bundle, but then he stepped back and abruptly pulled what looked like a rolled-up ukiyo-e print from the sleeve of his sleeping yukata.

“Shishou?” Kenshin unrolled it and shoved it forward. “What’s the octopus doing to that lady?”

Hiko gaped in astonishment at the image of a nude woman being… attended to… rather explicitly… by a very large octopus. An octopus which, if the expression on the woman’s face was anything to judge by, clearly knew what it was doing.

Clearly, the previous owner of the house had had predilections best left unpondered.

“Where…” Hiko croaked. “Where did you find that?”

“In the back of the shed,” the boy said, eyes wide and utterly guileless. “Why?”

“Never mind.” Hiko shook his head and silently cursed himself for never having properly cleaned out the shed when he’d first found the place in its deserted state and repaired it for his own use.

“Just get rid of it,” he ordered gruffly. “And then get to work on that snow.”

Kenshin frowned, but as usual, didn’t argue or push back. Wordlessly he set the print aside and grabbed the broom. And Hiko, muttering his thanks for Kenshin’s absolute innocence in that regard, clambered back up onto the roof with the thatch under one arm to begin the laborious process of repairing the roof.

_Maybe tomorrow morning he would be able to lie in his futon undisturbed…_

~~~  
~~~  
~~~

When the thaw came, Hiko began Enishi on the painstaking instruction of the nine basic strikes and their associated stances. 

As before, he’d forgotten just how many corrections there were to be made on a novice’s body positioning. And as before, he’d forgotten just how tedious the initial stages of instruction tended to be.

Not that the other aspects of the boy’s training were neglected; Hiko spent hours coaching Enishi through his sprinting and leaping. Though the snow had melted, the stream was now merrily rushing along, and Enishi tended to spend his late afternoons running upstream against the current. 

When he wasn’t using Kenshin’s old log to practice his vertical leap, that was.

“So when can I start running up walls?” Enishi clambered back onto the log once again. “How long until that happens?”

“You can try running up one of the trees, if you like.” Hiko’s eyebrows knit doubtfully. “Though I expect you won’t be ready for that until you can jump your own height at least three times in a row.”

Enishi scowled. “Well, how long did it take Kenshin?”

“Kenshin began his training four years earlier than you,” Hiko reminded Enishi for what felt like the thousandth time. “Comparing your training to his is pointless.”

Though he did have to admit that the boy showed a great deal of motivation. While Kenshin had been a prodigy, Enishi had shown a surprising degree of raw skill.

“Give it until the snow falls again,” he muttered. “And then we’ll see.”

“What?” Enishi’s scowl deepened. “That’s nearly a year. Not acceptable.”

Not to mention a will of pure iron…

“It’s not possible for you to do right now.” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “If you tried, you’d only frustrate yourself. Your legs aren’t strong enough, and your balance is nowhere near what it would need to be.” 

“Fine.” Enishi leaped off the log, and while his landing lacked grace or finesse, it wasn’t utterly hopeless either. “It’s impossible right now, but it can’t take a whole year.”

Hiko smiled inwardly, in spite of himself. The boy’s determination was admirable, even if his skills didn’t match up with it.

“Be that as it may,” he retorted, “the last time I looked, I was the master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, not you.”

He coiled his legs beneath him and sprang suddenly upward, rattling the bare branches of the trees with the wind of his movement, his feet reaching a height of twelve shaku even without his full effort. 

He landed lightly, his cloak fluttering down around him, and raised a single eyebrow at Enishi.

Enishi folded his arms and glowered at him. “Well, you’re old. You’re like… thirty.”

“You won’t be doing that within a year’s time,” Hiko said flatly. “And running up a wall requires nearly as much leg strength.”

~~~  
~~~  
~~~

_Kenshin had fallen silent again…_

The great drifts of snow that had remained on the ground well into early spring had finally melted, the trees had begun to burst into flower and leaf, and the last of the animals had shaken off their winter sleep. But Kenshin, who had been speaking and even joking not long beforehand, had resumed his former habit of quietly obeying instructions but never speaking up.

More than once, Hiko had woken in the middle of the night to find the boy outside, practicing his strikes and leaps as though possessed. He invariably watched until his apprentice caught sight of him, then beckoned the boy back into the house.

This night was no different.

Kenshin returned to the house, pausing only to prop his bokutou against the outside wall. He studied Hiko for a long, wordless moment - and Hiko found he didn’t know what to say either - and then silently returned to his futon and pulled the blanket up.

Hiko felt a brief moment of unease at his apprentice’s complete reversion - why was it happening? - but collected himself as quickly as he could. 

“What’s the matter with you, boy?” he asked, sitting beside Kenshin’s futon and glaring at him. 

The boy had woken him up in the middle of the night with his absence, and now that he was awake, he was going to get to the bottom of this.

Kenshin didn’t respond right away, but he wasn’t in the habit of ignoring direct questions either. Finally, quietly, he said, “Just couldn’t sleep.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “For this many nights?” He shook his head. “There is no ‘just’ about it. Why can’t you sleep?”

“I’ll try harder to sleep.” Kenshin frowned. “Sorry.”

“You were sleeping just fine a week ago.” Hiko rolled his eyes impatiently. “And you’ve never needed to _try_ to sleep before. So either I’m not working you hard enough during your training, or there’s something you’re not telling me.” He frowned. “And I know for a fact that there’s nothing wrong with my training methods.”

“I’ll go back to sleeping just fine.” Kenshin rolled onto his side as if to prove it. “Sorry for waking you.”

“Your stubbornness isn’t getting you anywhere,” Hiko growled. “If I believed that you could simply will yourself back to sleep, I’d never even have gotten out of my futon.”

Kenshin blew out a frustrated breath, his hands clenching into fists. 

“But here I am,” Hiko continued, “awake and alert, and all you’re doing by refusing to tell me what’s really the matter with you is irritating me.”

“Leave me alone!” Kenshin shouted, bolting upright and glaring at Hiko with uncharacteristically angry eyes. “Just leave me alone, and I’ll stop irritating you!”

Hiko’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He said nothing, but merely waited, never taking his eyes off of Kenshin. The boy would unburden himself soon enough under the weight of that gaze.

Kenshin glowered back at him. “I don’t-” he started. “I don’t want-”

Abruptly he pushed himself out of his futon and stalked toward the door, barely pausing to step into his zori. He wrenched the door open and took a deep breath of the early-spring air.

“I don’t want to be here right now.”

Hiko stood and watched the boy tremble in the doorway. “And where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know,” Kenshin said immediately, and then quietly - so quietly, Hiko had to strain to hear him - added, “Home.”

Hiko sighed. 

The boy hadn’t grasped it yet, apparently. Even after more than half a year of living up on the mountain with him, after long months of training, after the first few weeks of adjusting, he still hadn’t fully realized that the ‘home’ he’d once had now existed only in his memory.

“You are home, boy,” he replied evenly.

The boy sighed so deeply, his body shook with it, and he leaned his forehead against the door. “Kaachan and Touchan won’t even know where I’ve gone,” he whispered. “No one knows.”

Hiko wondered for a brief moment whether the boy’s mind had broken all of a sudden. But that couldn’t have been possible; if such a thing were to have happened, it would have happened months beforehand.

No, the boy knew that his parents were dead. Knew that most of his village was dead, hopefully including the daimyo who had sold him to the slavers. Who were also dead, along with the other unfortunates in the caravan, and the bandits who had attacked them.

So much death, and all Hiko seemed able to do was add to it.

“I know where you are,” he said. “And right now, that’s all that matters.”

The boy turned on him suddenly. “That’s not all that matters!” He spat the words out as if the taste disgusted him. “You’re not my parents!”

Hiko’s brows knit. “No, I’m not.” His voice lowered a notch. “But they can’t help you anymore.”

His dead master cackled from his mountainside grave in the far north.

Kenshin’s shoulders slumped, and he once again turned and leaned his forehead against the door. 

“I can’t help them,” he whispered. “Obon will come, and we won’t know where to find each other. They’ll think I just disappeared.”

Hiko sighed heavily. 

Of all the obstacles he had envisioned helping the boy to overcome, this was not one he had ever considered. Nor was he in any way equipped to provide any sort of counsel. His own family was a thing of the long-distant past; with a single exception, they had not entered his conscious musings for many years now. He had neither the time nor the inclination to offer any prayers for the dead, to sweep their graves clean or to converse with their bones. 

The dead were dead, and the living had work to do.

The boy, it seemed, was of a different mind.

“They exist now in the only place which matters,” Hiko rumbled. In two strides, he covered the distance between himself and the boy and tapped his forefinger sharply against Kenshin’s chest. “In here.” He tapped Kenshin’s forehead with the same finger, perhaps a bit more sharply. “And in here.”

Kenshin sighed. He opened his mouth once or twice, then shook his head and let his gaze drift back toward the outside. 

“I can help you, though.” Hiko’s voice sharpened. “I can teach you to protect yourself.” He gestured towards his sword, which leaned against the wall as it always did at night. “If you learn Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu and learn it well, then you can defend yourself from anyone who might seek to harm you. You can defend those who cannot defend themselves. You will never have to fear any man.” 

He smiled grimly. “And any hundred men will fear _you_.”

The boy frowned at that. “Why would anyone fear me?”

“Because you will be able to carve a path through them in an eyeblink, no matter how well-trained or well-armed they may be.” Hiko’s smile tautened and his eyes narrowed. “Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is invincible, after all.”

Kenshin didn’t argue the claim. Instead he looked up at Hiko and said, “Why would I _want_ anybody to fear me?”

Hiko paused to consider the boy. To consider his naivete. 

_“Because in the twisted world we live in, fear means respect.” He looked into the boy’s eyes. “And respect means survival...”_

~~~  
~~~  
~~~

“I don’t want anyone to fear me,” Kenshin had responded, and Hiko had very likely scoffed at that, but the memory had blurred and softened with time.

He wondered if Kenshin remembered saying that at all. Wondered if he realized the irony of it now.

At twenty-two years old, Hiko had been ill-equipped to properly deal with a traumatized child, but they had struggled through it and-

“Are you even watching?” Enishi cut into his thoughts rudely. “Because what I just did was great, and I don’t even think you were watching.”

“I was watching.” Tomoe stood to the side, Kenichi on her hip. They had both come outside to enjoy the warm spring sunshine. 

Kenichi babbled something that was likely an affirmation that he, too, had been watching.

“And were you suitably impressed?” Hiko asked dryly, watching Kenichi’s arms flop around as he reached for a nearby - and thankfully nimble - butterfly.

“I was impressed,” Enishi muttered. “I was very impressed with myself.”

“I know you were,” Tomoe said soothingly.

Enishi scowled at that. “That’s so patronizing, Neechan.”

“I’m so pleased you know that word.” A small smile tugged at the corner of Tomoe’s mouth.

Hiko, grateful that his lapse in attention had been masked by the siblings’ bickering, chose that moment to cut in.

“Do it again,” he said, as he had always said to Kenshin when he’d managed to do something perfectly. “Do it until you can do it perfectly every time.”

“You didn’t even see it!” Enishi threw his arms in the air, nearly losing grip on his bokutou. “You don’t even know if it was perfect or not.”

“Whether it was or not isn’t important.” Hiko’s eyebrows knit. “Doing it perfectly once doesn’t mean you never have to do it again. It means that you have to practice until it’s always done perfectly.”

“And yet, only a Buddha can attain perfection,” Tomoe said serenely, as Kenichi continued to wave at passing butterflies.

Enishi gaped at her. “I think you’ve had too much sun, Neechan.”

Hiko snorted with sudden laughter at the absurdity of the family his idiot apprentice had gathered to him. The family which had stayed on with him after Kenshin’s departure.

“Your sister’s not wrong,” he chuckled. “Musashi himself wrote that the virtue of perfection is the impossibility of its attainment.”

“Okay, I’ll do it again,” Enishi said quickly. “Better than talking about Buddhas or Musashi.”

“You’d do well to learn something about Musashi,” Hiko retorted. “For a man who never studied Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, he was a remarkable swordsman and an equally remarkable philosopher.”

Enishi shook his head. “I’m going to do it. Actually watch this time!”

Hiko sat back on his stump, crossed one leg over his knee, and basked in the presence of this odd family that Kenshin had assembled. The family that had somehow managed to become his own as well.

“I’m watching,” he grumbled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Here I am, a day late and a dollar short, but alive and posting! Happy Labor Day weekend to my US and Canada-based readers. To everyone else, I hope your weekend was precisely as awesome as you wanted it to be. 
> 
> So HATSU TANJO isn't REALLY a first birthday celebration, due to the custom of everyone celebrating their birthday during New Year's festivities. (WE ALL TURN ONE YEAR OLDER TOGETHER, YOU GUYS!) It was really a celebration of a baby surviving their first year of life, since infant mortality was SO HIGH back then. And one of the ways Hatsu Tanjo is celebrated is by strapping a 2 kg/4 lbs rice cake to the baby's back and watching them toddle humorously around with it. Because... life is a struggle, but at least you get to eat? 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> The ukiyo-e print that Kenshin discovered is Japan's first tentacle porn, lovingly painted in 1814 by Hokusai, called "Dream of the Fisherman's Wife." You can google it. It's not safe for work, because even in 1814, the Japanese could expertly craft hentai. The fisherman's wife is clearly enjoying herself though, so I consider it consentacles porn. 
> 
> Ahem. 
> 
> Good night, everybody.
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Having educated you on both unusual Japanese customs and consentacles on what is my holiday weekend, my work here is done! Except it's not. This is clearly not the end of the story. As always, hit me with your best commentary, because it is truly the awesome readership that keeps me posting on a weekly basis. You're all amazing. Thank you for coming back week after week!


	18. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the autumn harvest festivals arrived, the people of Kyoto seemed to put their collective foot down. The fighting abruptly came to a halt, long enough for the festivities to commence, and Kenshin saw his opportunity and slipped away.
> 
> He had been gone for a year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HANDY DANDY GLOSSARY  
> Hatsu Tanjo : basically a 1st birthday celebration, pre-Meiji era style  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Erabitori ceremony : “Pick and keep an item" ceremony. More in notes  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Sempai : Someone senior to you at work, can also be used admiringly

**Keiou 2  
(May 1866-October 1866)**

Any thought Kenshin might have entertained about making it home in time for his son’s Hatsu Tanjo was blown away with the discovery that the Bakufu intended to mount another military campaign against Choshu as well as Satsuma.

The early summer months passed in a blur of bloodshed and violence and death, though he clung to the idea of Kenichi toddling around with the red-white rice cakes on his back before his erabitori ceremony

He wondered which item his son had chosen.

The warmth of early summer gave way to the sweltering humidity of late summer, and while that might have been a good time to slip away for a few days, the Shogun went and died of heart failure instead.

Which was _good_ , but if he could have waited one more month, Kenshin would have greatly appreciated the courtesy. 

While the new Shogun’s heavy-handed attempts to quell the rising tide of anti-Bakufu sentiment meant that the Ishin Shishi had new allies from the Tosa domain, it also meant that the Shogun had decided to, quite literally, bring in the big guns.

The French and the Russians and the British allied with the Bakufu. 

Bad enough dealing with the Shinsengumi on what was turning into a near-nightly basis. Now there were damned cannons and rifles in the streets as well, often wielded by men who barely had any idea of what they were doing.

Incompetence was dangerous, and the resulting nightly fires bore testament to such. 

When the autumn harvest festivals arrived, the people of Kyoto seemed to put their collective foot down. The fighting abruptly came to a halt, long enough for the festivities to commence, and Kenshin saw his opportunity and slipped away.

He had been gone for a year.

Hiko was the first one to see him coming up the path to the house on Mount Atago, and even at a distance, Kenshin could see the relieved smile on his shishou’s face.

“Well, well.” He spoke loudly, obviously intent on letting everyone else know what he’d seen. “Look who’s finally come home for a visit.”

There was the sound of dishes being hastily put down from inside the house, and Tomoe came hurrying outside with an expectant look on her face.

Kenichi toddled out after her.

Kenshin felt his heart drop into his stomach. 

His son had gotten so _big._ He was walking! He was babbling in a sweet, little high-pitched voice and clutching a well-worn stuffed rabbit to his chest. 

The reality of what a year meant slapped him in the face, and he nearly reeled from the shock of it.

“Kenshin,” Tomoe breathed, her eyes crinkling at the corners in an unmistakable smile. “Oh, it’s so wonderful to see you.” 

She held out a hand to each of them, and it felt so good to simply hold any part of her after so long. Kenichi’s tiny little fingers intertwined with Tomoe’s, but his eyes were on Kenshin, big and wide and full of curiosity.

“Look, it’s Otouchan.” Tomoe smiled. “Otouchan’s come home.”

Kenichi blurbled something that sounded like “Toucha,” but otherwise stayed rooted in place. His hair, once so fuzzy, had gotten silkier and a bit longer, but the color hadn’t changed at all, and Kenshin longed to hold him.

Kenshin swallowed down the thought that Kenichi probably didn’t recognize him, ‘Otouchan’ or not. 

Best to be patient.

He reluctantly let go of Tomoe’s hand and crouched down in front of his son, searching for something profound to say. What came out instead was, “You probably don’t remember me, but look.” He held out one of his own long strands of hair. “Our hair matches.”

“Hair!” Kenichi squealed, though it wasn’t apparent to Kenshin if the boy actually knew what the word meant or not. 

He became aware of Tomoe crouching beside him, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder, her eyes shining. 

“I have so much to tell you,” she murmured, her touch feather-light. “About his first steps, his first words, everything I made sure to write down so that I could describe it to you when you came back.”

He managed a tired sort of smile, but his words were true. “I want to hear all about it. I want to know what he chose at his erabitori ceremony.”

“‘mony!” Kenichi parroted.

Hiko gave the three of them a look of satisfaction. Still, his voice was gruff as he announced “You look like you haven’t had a bath or a decent night’s sleep in weeks. You walked all night to get here, I imagine?”

Kenshin looked up at him. “Slipped away when the harvest festivities started.”

Hiko nodded in confirmation and gave Tomoe a slightly reproachful look. “He needs a wash almost as badly as his clothes do. I imagine he’ll be more pleasant to embrace afterward.”

Kenshin frowned, but didn’t argue the point. He had walked all night, after all. 

“You speak from experience, I’m sure,” Tomoe replied blandly. And, as Hiko swelled indignantly, she smiled gently at Kenshin and stood gracefully, Kenichi in her arms. Kenshin followed suit.

“Come and clean up, then.” She sounded content and relieved. “I’ll make you something to eat.”

“Hey, Shishou! Neechan! Wait until you see just how many fish I caught!” Enishi stood at the edge of the clearing, basket of fish slung over one shoulder.

The boy had definitely gotten taller in the past year - he would have seen nearly twelve summers now - and he looked as if the lifestyle on Mount Atago agreed with him.

And also… ‘Shishou’? 

Enishi grinned widely when he caught sight of Kenshin. “Hey, guess what?” he said as he approached. “You’re worth six ryo now!”

“We’re still not turning him in for the reward.” Hiko rolled his eyes.

“Bring me the fish once they’re cleaned, Enishi,” called Tomoe as she headed back towards the house with Kenichi.

While Kenshin worked his way through a bowl of very good ochazuke - which Tomoe had topped with strips of seaweed, toasted sesame seeds, and chunks of trout - Enishi showed him the series of wanted broadsheets that he had apparently saved for just this purpose.

“Your height keeps changing, so I really think they should sack the artist.” Enishi held up one example. “But they’ve got the hair right. Not the teeth though.”

“Or the flying bit,” Kenshin murmured through a mouthful of rice. “Don’t know why that keeps coming up.”

“But six ryo is a lot.” Enishi looked at him slyly. “We could live very well off that reward.”

“You’re never going to drop that, are you?” Tomoe set down a cup of tea in front of each of them. “Even after Hiko-san and I both told you it’s not going to happen?”

“What would we even do with six ryo?” Hiko finished off his own tea and placed the cup down in front of him one-handed. The other hand was holding Kenichi, who was gnawing messily at a rice cracker. “We have everything we need already.”

“‘ready!” Kenichi sprayed a mouthful of rice cracker onto Hiko’s lap.

Enishi roundly ignored them. “If we’re lucky, it’ll go up to ten ryo before the war is over.”

“It just means they’ve gotten desperate if the reward goes that high,” Hiko snorted, not bothering to brush off his lap.

“Or that they don’t believe anyone can actually collect, and it’s simply an exercise in saving face.” Tomoe moved to refill Hiko’s cup. 

“You may be giving them more credit than they’re due.” Hiko looked doubtful. “But either way, no one is actually going to collect the reward.” He narrowed his eyes at Enishi. “I hope we’ve established that by now.”

Enishi shrugged and looked at Kenshin. “If you turn yourself in and then escape,” he said cheerfully, “how about we go halfsies?”

Kenshin spooned another heapful of ochazuke into his mouth. “Sure.”

Tomoe sighed. “You know they’re not going to give him the reward on his own head, don’t you?”

Hiko snorted again and picked up his teacup to stop Kenichi from grabbing it. “I’m not convinced he knows anything.”

They continued to go back and forth like that, while Kenichi chewed sloppily on his rice cracker until it ended up as spitty crumbs in his tiny hands. He clapped his hands together, spraying crumbs everywhere. Hiko either didn’t seem to notice or mind.

Kenshin marveled at how easily the four of them had formed a cohesive unit in his absence. How effortlessly they bantered with each other. How casually his own son sat in Hiko’s lap.

A year. He had missed a whole year.

His stomach twisted uncomfortably, and he tried to cover his unease by eating another large mouthful of ochazuke.

“It must feel like such a relief to be back home,” Tomoe said softly, laying a hand on his arm. “To be away from the fighting for a few days at least. We’ve all missed you.”

He could never hide anything from her.

“You’ve missed the fact that I’ve been training in Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu,” Enishi said suddenly, a proud grin on his face. “For nearly a year now.”

Ah.

Well, Kenshin had his explanation.

“Is that so?” He set his ochazuke bowl down. “Have you been kicked off the cliff into the waterfall yet?”

Enishi’s eyes widened and he turned an accusing gaze on Hiko. “Are you planning on kicking me off a cliff into a waterfall?”

“Only if you can’t dodge the kick,” Hiko shot back easily. “But I did promise your sister that I’d make sure you knew how to swim first, so at least you’ll have a good sporting chance at living through it.”

Enishi turned back to Kenshin. “You didn’t dodge the kick.” He frowned. “Wait, how old were you?”

Kenshin thought about it for a moment. Training had blurred together with time, but, “Maybe… eight summers?”

Again, Enishi looked at Hiko incredulously. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Me?” Hiko arched an eyebrow at Enishi. “What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you the one who’s always comparing yourself to him no matter how many times I remind you that he started training in his seventh year?”

Enishi glanced quickly at Kenshin, then looked away. “I didn’t say that,” he muttered.

Kenshin picked up his ochazuke bowl and resumed eating. It seemed the correct strategy in the moment. 

“Hiko-san has been very patient with my brother so far,” Tomoe said serenely.

“I don’t know about _patient_ ,” grumbled Hiko. “ _Tolerant_ , maybe. But just because he hasn’t gone over the cliff yet doesn’t mean he never will. It’s the only way they ever learn.”

“He means there are other apprentices at the bottom of the waterfall.” Kenshin scraped the last bit of ochazuke out of the bowl. “The ones who weren’t strong enough swimmers.”

“I might have meant that.” Hiko sipped his tea. “But you’ll never know until you go looking for the bones yourself.”

“Bones!” Kenichi repeated gleefully.

“You’ll have your chance when you’re older, bozu.” Hiko patted Kenichi atop the head with a massive hand; Kenichi’s head bobbed under the weight. “Say, in about four years or so.”

“You are not throwing my son into a waterfall when he’s five years old,” Tomoe stated flatly.

“Oh, fine.” Hiko scowled. “Six years, then.”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Kenshin’s mouth, though his eyelids seemed to dragging in the opposite direction. A bath and nap were in order, and then he wanted to spend every available moment that he had with his family.

As always, Tomoe was one step ahead of him. “I’ll go warm the bath for you, and I’ll bring you a clean set of clothes while you’re washing up.” She glanced at her brother. “Enishi, please lay out his futon.”

She took his empty bowl and deposited it in the washing bucket on her way out the door. 

Enishi scowled, but he did as he was told. “You’re lucky I like you a reasonable amount,” he said to Kenshin, once his sister was out of earshot.

“He’s luckier your sister likes him,” Hiko chuckled, Kenichi bouncing on his lap. “And probably more than a reasonable amount.”

Kenichi clapped his hands enthusiastically and babbled something that might have been agreement.

Kenshin nodded at his son. “I concur.” He looked over at Enishi. “And you’re lucky you’ve been warned about the waterfall. Now that my own apprenticeship has been nullified, you’d better start working on your ability to dodge.”

Hiko gave a barking laugh. “Oh, wouldn’t that just be your lucky day.” He snorted, shaking his head. “Nullify your apprenticeship? There is no such thing. You’ve been my idiot apprentice for nine years, and you’ll be my idiot apprentice until I say otherwise.”

“Ten, actually,” Enishi said helpfully. “Aren’t you seventeen now?”

Kenshin ignored him and looked at Hiko. “It doesn’t work like that. There can only be one. You said so yourself.”

Enishi carefully laid the blanket over the futon, but his attention was fixed on the conversation. 

“Besides,” Kenshin couldn’t resist, even though he knew very well that he was walking into dangerous territory, “we mutually agreed to end things.”

Hiko’s face grew stormy. “What did I tell you I would do to you if you ever said that again?”

Kenshin reached for Tomoe’s half-finished cup of tea. “You have my son on your lap.” He took a sip. “Besides, I didn’t make the rules. One master, one apprentice, going all the way back to the Sengoku Era.” He waved vaguely toward Enishi. “It’s your turn to hear those stories now. Repeatedly.”

Hiko’s glower seemed to grow red-hot. “Be that as it may,” he continued obstinately, “you’re still my apprentice. I haven’t terminated your apprenticeship, you haven’t completed it, and we most certainly did _not_ mutually agree to end things.”

His annoyance seemed somewhat muted, though, by the presence of the burbling and clapping toddler on his lap.

“He did go off to war,” Enishi pointed out. “Isn’t that kind of mutually agreeing to end things?”

The glare Hiko turned on Enishi could have frozen the waterfall in the middle of summer.

“There was nothing mutual about his going down the mountain the first time,” Hiko growled. “And I made it clear to him before he left the second time that his apprenticeship was still underway.”

Kenshin took another long pull on the tea. “I don’t remember that discussion.”

“‘scussion!” Kenichi babbled.

“See?” Kenshin said mildly. “My son doesn’t remember it either.”

Hiko rolled his eyes and jounced Kenichi on his lap. Kenichi squealed happily, and Hiko seemed slightly mollified.

“I’m not entertaining this ridiculous notion of yours any longer.” He waved a hand dismissively. “You’re my apprentice, and that’s that.”

“That!” Kenichi added, and Kenshin smiled into his teacup before looking back up. 

Everyone stared at each other intently, silently daring the other to speak.

“The bath is ready.” Tomoe appeared in the doorway, and if she noticed the stare-off, she didn’t say anything. “You should get right in.”

…

The moon hung bright and pale in the sky, Kenichi was sound asleep in Tomoe’s futon, and Kenshin and Tomoe slipped out of the hut and into the woods.

They walked in silence, dried leaves crunching under their zori, until Kenshin said, “The leaves have all turned gold and red. I never notice it in Kyoto.”

“Kyoto is a different place,” Tomoe replied, her hand finding Kenshin’s and her fingers entwining themselves with his. “Full of different things to notice, I imagine.”

While that might have been true, Kenshin imagined that anything he found noticeable in Kyoto - such as foolish men nearly setting fire to buildings while attempting to use British rifles - would only make Tomoe uneasy. 

Instead he said, “I noticed how _active_ Kenichi is now. He never stops.”

Their son had spent the entire afternoon outside, toddling back and forth from his toys to interesting sticks and rocks, some of which he brought to Kenshin, to leaves and dirt, all of it apparently endlessly fascinating and energizing to a very little boy. 

It had been almost exhausting - delightfully so - watching him.

Tomoe smiled. “No, he doesn’t.” Her smile turned thoughtful. “Hiko-san carved a little bokutou for his erabitori, and he was fascinated by it. Now Hiko-san swears he’ll grow up to be a swordsman.”

Kenshin glanced at her. “He chose a bokutou?”

“He picked up the chopsticks first.” Tomoe gave a half-smile at the memory. “And he wanted to touch everything. But he played with the bokutou the longest.”

She paused for a moment, then tightened her fingers almost imperceptibly in his. “Perhaps it’s going to be a family tradition.”

“There’s only supposed to be one apprentice at a time,” Kenshin said, then couldn’t help but smile at the petulance in his tone. “And that apprentice is, thankfully, Enishi.”

Tomoe gave him a curious, searching sort of look. “Hiko-san doesn’t seem at all interested in ending your apprenticeship. And when I asked him about it, he said he didn’t see any difficulty with having two.”

Kenshin scowled, but the look didn’t hold. “He says a lot of things.”

They reached the riverbank and seated themselves on a large rock. Kenshin slid an arm around Tomoe’s waist, nudging her closer, and she leaned her head gently against his. Kenshin spent a moment drinking in the sight of the moonlight sparkling across the water. In Kyoto, there was never time to appreciate such things.

“I’m sorry I missed our son’s Hatsu Tanjo,” he murmured. “I tried to get here, but…” He shook his head. “I would’ve never wanted to miss it.”

“You can’t be everywhere at once.” Tomoe nudged her head softly against Kenshin’s. “You’re trying to balance yourself between your duty to your fellow man and your duty to your family. Both of those causes are good ones, and important ones, but you can’t fully commit to one without sacrificing the other.”

Kenshin sucked in his breath. “I don’t want to sacrifice my family ever.”

“You were here for us when we needed you the most.” Tomoe drew back her head. Gently, with soft but insistent fingertips, she nudged Kenshin’s chin to turn his face towards hers. “You came for me and Kenichi when the Yaminobu brought us to that horrible forest. One missed milestone isn’t much when weighed against something like that.”

A sigh slipped out of Kenshin’s mouth. He leaned his forehead against Tomoe’s and closed his eyes. “When this is over, I don’t want to miss anything ever again. I want to be here for all of it.”

For a moment, Tomoe was silent, simply leaning against him without moving. Then she spoke in a soft voice.

“My father has been missing all of this. I can’t tell him what I need to tell him in a letter.” A hint of shame crept into her voice. “I haven’t told him about you. He doesn’t know about Kenichi. I’m afraid to give him any details after what the Yaminobu did. And…”

Her voice trailed off, and when it returned a moment later, Kenshin caught a note of determination in it.

“I want to go to Edo to see him when the war is over.” She pulled back and looked Kenshin in the eyes. “I want us all to go.”

“We can go,” Kenshin said immediately, before he could allow himself to think of the ramifications of such a meeting. “As soon as this is over, we can go.”

A look of sheer relief washed over Tomoe’s face and seemed to pass through her body like a wave. She had clearly been thinking about this for some time.

“I don’t think he’s going to be very pleased with me,” she murmured, though the relief did not seem to lessen. “Marrying and having a son, and then not telling him for years.”

And just like that, the ramifications that Kenshin wasn’t quite ready to think about reached out and smacked him hard in the face. At the very least, he was grateful that Tomoe decided not to mention that her father would very likely be (rather legitimately) upset at just _who_ his daughter had married. 

Perhaps having a grandson would mollify him a bit?

Best not to think too hard about it yet.

“Perhaps he’ll be so happy to see you that he won’t be displeased at all,” Kenshin suggested, though his own initial homecoming hadn’t worked out like that in the slightest. And the look Tomoe gave him was enough to let him know that she remembered it all too well.

“My father isn’t the type to show his displeasure,” she sighed. “Not like Hiko-san, at least. But he has an uncanny way of making it known regardless.”

“So he doesn’t call you an idiot before kicking you off a steep ledge?” Kenshin raised an eyebrow. “How could you possibly know he’s annoyed with you then?”

Tomoe smiled wryly. “Have ‘subtlety’ and ‘nuance’ ever been words in Hiko-san’s vocabulary?”

“No,” Kenshin said immediately. “I don’t think he’s ever even heard of those words.”

“Well, my father has.” Tomoe sighed. “When you meet him, you’ll understand. I don’t think he and Hiko-san could possibly be any more different.”

They lapsed into companionable silence, Tomoe leaning her head against his, both of them staring at the river. Too many thoughts raced through Kenshin’s head right then, but he pushed them aside in favor of just being in the moment with his wife. 

Eventually, though, Tomoe stiffened beside him as though suddenly reminded of something urgent. She turned to look at him with concern in her eyes.

“The traitor,” she said, and Kenshin felt his jaw clench at the word. “Did they ever discover who it was?”

“Yes,” he said stiffly. “It was Iizuka.”

A series of expressions fought for control of Tomoe’s face. Surprise, however, was not one of them.

“That man always made my skin crawl,” she said simply, and a look of deep distaste settled in her eyes. “He came into the room once, while you were asleep and I was sewing, and asked if you wanted to visit a brothel with him.”

“He used to ask me that often.” Kenshin made a sound of disgust and shook his head. “Never thought he’d ask that in front of you though.” 

“I think he enjoyed saying crude things around me.” She frowned. “And the way he used to look at me sometimes…”

Kenshin’s arm tightened reflexively around Tomoe’s waist. “He won’t ever be a problem again.” His tone sounded dark to his own ears. 

Tomoe froze against him. “You didn’t…?”

“I didn’t,” he said quietly. “My successor did.”

“Oh.” Her body seemed to sag slowly against him. “I suppose I should have realized there would be another hitokiri.”

Several responses crossed Kenshin’s mind just then, all of them far too dark. Finally he settled on, “Katsura-san believes such work will be necessary until the war is won.”

“What do you believe?” she asked simply.

Another long pause, then he said, “I believe that if my successor hadn’t discovered that Iizuka was the traitor, you and our son would still be in danger.” 

An almost imperceptible shiver ghosted through her.

“I’m glad of so many confusing things,” she murmured. “Of his death, of the fact that we’re all safe from his treachery…” She shook her head and pressed herself closer to Kenshin. “But I’m also glad that you weren’t the one to kill him.”

“So am I,” he admitted. “I didn’t like him, but… so am I.”

Tomoe sat there quietly through several slow beats of Kenshin’s heart, then spoke in a slightly steadier voice.

“You should thank him,” she said. “If you can. For all of us.”

“I did so last autumn. Our paths haven’t crossed again, but…” He tried not to sound too flippant. “I suppose that’s the nature of the work.”

“The work was driving you mad,” Tomoe said softly. “I hope it won’t do the same to this other poor man.”

Kenshin found he had nothing to say to that. 

...

Two nights later, Kenshin very reluctantly left his family on Mount Atago. 

Tomoe wrapped a freshly-washed, lightly-perfumed scarf around his neck and gave him another letter to mail to her father in Edo. Enishi cheerfully reminded him to make sure the bounty on his head rose to at least ten ryo. Hiko gruffly told him not to die.

Kenichi toddled a few steps after him and whispered a very sweet, “Bye bye, Toucha,” and Kenshin tried very hard to not let his heart break in two right then and there.

When the war was over, he’d find a way to make it up to all of them. Especially his son.

He arrived at the Yazuya dusty and in dire need of a bath, which one of the innkeeper’s girls obligingly warmed up for him. While he bathed, the innkeeper took his bundle of clothing and left a fresh set waiting for him. 

(Perhaps she was equally surprised that this particular safehouse hadn’t been discovered by the Shinsengumi yet, and so had attempted to be at least somewhat more cordial.)

“You have a message.” She passed it to him on his way up the stairs. “You’re a very sought after man, aren’t you?”

He considered telling her that he was worth at least six ryo, but why tempt fate?

The calligraphy was unfamiliar, though it appeared it had been brushed out in a hurry:

_Welcome back, sempai. A woman I know is visiting from Edo. Come to the Hakusuiya in Shimabara this evening and I’ll introduce you._

_Don’t worry. There will be plenty of rice crackers._

_\- Shishio_

Apparently it took Iizuka’s death for Kenshin to finally have reason to visit the red light district for anything other than any assignment. 

He folded up the letter, tucked it into his sleeve, and stepped back out into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Welcome back, fam. A shorter chapter this week, after missing a chapter last week, but like... will 2020 just slow its goddamn roll already? For my American readers, the passing of Notorious RBG in what has already been an absolute trashfire of a year is just another gut punch. In the words of the immortal Jay, "It's time to kick back, drink some booze, and smoke some weed." That's about what I can handle at this point. And kudos to you if you get the reference.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Anyway, you're here for the history lesson, right? The erabitori ceremony - "pick and keep an item" - is a tradition on the baby's first birthday (Hatsu Tanjo) where several items are laid out - such as money, chopsticks, a book - and whichever item the baby chooses symbolizes their future interests. Of course Hiko would have made a little bokutou for Kenichi! Also, Kenshin thinking about Kenichi toddling around with a red-white rice cake on his back - I mentioned this custom in more detail in the last chapter's notes - is also part of Hatsu Tanjo, and symbolizes... like... how life is a struggle, but hey, there's food.
> 
> The bits about the Shogun dying of heart failure and being replaced by a new Shogun, along with the foreign powers constantly shifting allegiances, is not artistic license. Wars be like that most times. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> As always, talk to me and I'll talk back to you. That's what makes this fun, after all. And I could certainly use the distraction OMG DISTRACT ME FROM THIS TRASHFIRE HELLSCAPE WE LIVE IN PLEASE. Ahem. As always, your commentary is most desirable, that it is.


	19. Shimabara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had never been in the presence of an oiran. Certainly he had never had the money to even consider such a thing.
> 
> Hanahomura giggled behind her heavily-brocaded, draping sleeve. “You didn’t tell me he was adorable.”
> 
> Shishio snorted with laughter, a single thin stream of smoke rising from his pipe as he moved it away from his mouth. “I trusted you to find out for yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HANDY DANDY GLOSSARY  
> Kamuro/shikomi girls : child assistants of oiran/geisha, between 5-9 years old. More in notes  
> Oiran: high-ranking courtesans, considered better than “common” sex workers  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Fusuma: sliding room dividers, thicker than shoji, usually elaborately painted  
> Daisho: long sword (katana) and short sword (wakizashi) paired together  
> Sempai : Someone senior to you at work, can also be used admiringly   
> Kaki no tane : mix of crispy rice bits and peanuts. A common drinking snack  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government

**Keiou 2  
(October 1866)**

No matter the current political situation in Kyoto, Shimabara was always packed with throngs and open for business. 

That evening was no different.

Blazing lanterns hung from the Shimabara gate. The buildings were similarly lit, lanterns lining both sides of the street and bathing it in a diffuse glow. Patrons bustled in and out of the teahouses and restaurants and brothels, as did kamuro and shikomi girls, running errands for the oiran and geisha they attended. Strains of laughter and music could be heard behind the thin walls.

It was easy enough to both lose oneself and be lost in the winding corridors of Shimabara. It was no wonder Katsura-san preferred to meet with the other Ishin Shishi leaders there.

Kenshin found the Hakusuiya with only a little difficulty and was let inside by a brightly dressed girl who could not have possibly seen more than seven summers.

“I know who you are, Oniisan.” The girl giggled behind her patterned sleeve. “We were told to look for you. You’re here to visit Hanahomura-dono and her friend.”

Kenshin tore his eyes away from the little girl - she was so _young_ \- and looked around, but the girl took him by the sleeve and pulled him along with her. Another girl appeared to take his zori, whisking them away with a laugh, and the first girl gently tugged him down a softly-lit hallway and up a flight of stairs.

He could hear gentle laughter and music and murmured conversation behind the rows of delicately-painted fusuma.

The girl stopped in front of a fusuma decorated with swirls of cherry blossoms and winding rivers. 

“Hanahomura-dono is very popular,” she explained brightly. “Which is why she’s graced Shimabara with her presence for a fortnight. You’re very privileged to meet her on such short notice.”

Kenshin didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that.

“Especially since she’s already entertaining a friend,” the girl continued. She gestured to his daisho and giggled. “So no fighting.”

Without further ado, she knelt down in front of the fusuma. “Hanahomura-dono, pardon the intrusion,” she called gently, sliding the fusuma open. “May I present Himura-san.”

It was only then - or maybe it was Hanahomura’s elaborate makeup or layers of heavy, silken kimono or the eight, enormous tortoiseshell and coral pins in her carefully coiffed wig - that Kenshin realized he wasn’t visiting a hostess at a teahouse or even a woman of pleasure at a common brothel, but an oiran.

“You are most welcome, Himura-san,” said Hanahomura in a low, musical voice that Kenshin supposed would be very beautiful when she sang. “Shishio-san has told me so much about you.”

And there was Shishio himself, sitting beside Hanahomura, legs tucked carelessly under him, his elegant long-stemmed kiseru pipe held languidly between his fingers and a satisfied smile on his sharp-featured face.

The girl bowed, forehead nearly touching the floor, and quietly slid the fusuma shut, leaving the three of them together. 

“I told you, didn’t I?” Shishio laughed softly as he got to his feet to welcome Kenshin into the room. “He doesn’t look a thing like those absurd broadsheets say he does.”

“So much the better,” replied Hanahomura, easily mirroring Shishio’s smile with her heavily-painted lips. “Big men are crude and unrefined.”

“Come and sit, sempai.” Shishio gestured to a pair of cushions beside trays bearing sake and an assortment of snacks. Including, Kenshin saw, a fanned-out stack of rice crackers.

Kenshin set his katana aside and seated himself on a cushion as Shishio returned to his place beside Hanahomura. “Rice crackers,” he murmured, suddenly at a loss for what he was meant to say. “You remembered.”

He had never been in the presence of an oiran. Certainly he had never had the money to even consider such a thing.

Hanahomura giggled behind her heavily-brocaded, draping sleeve. “You didn’t tell me he was adorable.”

Shishio snorted with laughter, a single thin stream of smoke rising from his pipe as he moved it away from his mouth. “I trusted you to find out for yourself.”

“Is that why you brought him along?” Hanahomura smiled again, her teeth shockingly white against the dark red of her painted lips. “Are you trying to play matchmaker for me, Shishio-san?”

Kenshin’s face flushed regrettably hot at that, which only seemed to delight Hanahomura.

“Oh, he really is adorable, but I think I might have broken him.” Gracefully she twitched her sleeve aside and poured the sake so smoothly, it hardly made a sound as it landed in the cups. “And it’s far too early for that.”

“Hanahomura is justifiably famous.” Shishio inclined his head at her as he accepted the cup she held out to him, and the two of them shared a smile before Hanahomura held out another cup of sake to Kenshin.

He took it with both hands and offered something of a nod and a murmured thanks, mind furiously trying to come up with something clever to say. 

“I was lucky enough to meet her in Edo sometime ago,” Shishio continued, “and even luckier to have struck up something of a friendship with her.”

“Before I was at all famous,” Hanahomura added, taking the last of the sake cups for herself. She managed to take a sip without leaving so much as a trace of red on the rim of the cup.

Kenshin tore his eyes from her bow-shaped mouth and looked over at Shishio instead. 

Shishio took a sip of his sake and sighed appreciatively. “Fine sake and the company of a finer woman for the evening, Himura-san. Have a drink and enjoy yourself.” 

Obligingly Kenshin took a small sip of the sake. It was very, very good, and likely ridiculously expensive. 

Shishio must have caught the look on his face. “It’s even better than the sake we had last time. I wonder how much it cost?”

Kenshin took another sip, reminding himself not to knock it back like cheap sake at a bar. “Probably more than either of us are worth.”

Hanahomura’s eyebrows rose in delight. “I understand you’re worth seven ryo.”

“Seven?” Kenshin frowned slightly. “I’ve only been gone two days. The price went up.”

“You also fought every division of the Shinsengumi to a standstill.” Shishio smiled proudly as though he had done it himself. 

Hanahomura looked Kenshin up and down at that, then took a delicate sip of sake. 

“And a group of Bakufu soldiers armed with Western rifles,” Shishio added. “That’s worth an extra ryo at bare minimum.” 

“I do so love it when you talk dirty,” Hanahomura crooned, and Kenshin nearly spit his sake out. “Tell me more about the soldiers with the big, complicated guns.”

“Oh?” Shishio returned her mischievous smile. “I haven’t even started talking about the cannons yet.”

“Ooh, cannons.” Hanahomura studied Kenshin for a moment. The tip of her tongue flicked lightly against her painted mouth. “Tell me all about the cannons, Himura-san.”

Hastily Kenshin swallowed another mouthful of sake. “Mostly they’re a nuisance,” he said honestly. “They start fires, they’re deafeningly loud, and the people wielding them usually have no idea what they’re doing.”

Hanahomura hummed thoughtfully at that. “So,” she finally said, eyes twinkling, “would you say they blow their load irresponsibly?”

Shishio had unluckily chosen that moment to take another sip of sake. Somehow, he managed not to snort it out through his nose when he laughed, though it seemed a very near thing.

“No, no,” Hanahomura chided lightly, “don’t choke. It’s too early in the evening for that.”

Before Kenshin could think of a response or even reach for his sake cup, Hanahomura smoothly refilled all three of them. 

“Do you get out much in the evenings, Himura-san?” she asked.

Kenshin sipped at his sake. “Most evenings.”

Shishio nodded appreciatively, his eyes still watering, and gestured to Kenshin. “Another reason you’re worth seven ryo.”

“Working every evening?” Hanahomura seemed to pout. “But there are so many better things to do at night.”

“I don’t…” Kenshin stumbled over the words, all at once understanding why Hanahomura was so popular. Or maybe he just had no idea how to properly talk to an oiran. 

Probably both. 

“I don’t really get the chance to do… many better things,” he finished.

“Such a shame.” Hanahomura took a languid sip of her sake. “To be so adorable and so dangerous, yet terribly unavailable.”

“If you keep that up,” Shishio gestured at Kenshin as he spoke to Hanahomura, “we won’t be able to tell where his face ends and his hair begins.”

Hanahomura giggled behind her sleeve again, and Kenshin took a hasty gulp of the sake, ostensibly for the expensive taste but mostly to cool his enflamed cheeks.

“Shall I play you something then?” Hanahomura suggested. “Something relaxing, perhaps?”

Shishio reached for the sake again, shaking his head. “We don’t need relaxing. This is supposed to be a party.” He grinned at Hanahomura. “Don’t play something soft and slow. Play something lively.”

Her mouth quirked into a smile and she looked at Kenshin. “What would you like, Himura-san?”

Kenshin set the sake cup down. “What do you play?”

“Oh, not much.” Hanahomura shrugged delicately. “Just the koto, shakuhachi, tsuzumi, shamisen, and kokyuu.”

Kenshin blinked.

“As I said,” Hanahomura continued, “not too terribly much. I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“No…” Kenshin started, then figured he might as well choose something he rarely had the opportunity to hear. “The kokyuu, then.”

As if on cue, a soft voice on the other side of the fusuma whispered, “Pardon the intrusion, Hanahomura-dono.” 

The fusuma slid open, and the same little girl from earlier bowed, handed Hanahomura a stringed instrument and its accompanying bow, and then bowed again before backing out of the room and sliding the fusuma shut.

Hanahomura struck up a surprisingly lively tune on the kokyuu, the first few notes of which made Shishio nod his head appreciatively. 

“If they paid us what we’re really worth, we’d be able to afford this every night.” Shishio reached for the tray of snacks, pointedly leaving the rice crackers alone. In fact, he paused with his hand hovering over them and instead reached (deliberately) for the kaki no tane. 

Kenshin felt obligated to crunch on a rice cracker immediately after that courtesy. Not that he minded in the slightest. 

“And wouldn’t this be a pleasant way to spend every night?” Shishio continued, tossing a handful of the crispy rice crescents and peanut mixture into his mouth.

“Are you suggesting we petition Katsura-san for a raise?” Kenshin raised an eyebrow and reached for another rice cracker.

“Do you think he can match what the Bakufu’s offering for you?” Shishio chuckled. “Because I’m fairly certain that’s the only way Hanahomura would agree to do this every night.”

“You never know,” Hanahomura smiled as she fluttered the bow across the strings of the kokyuu, bringing an almost trilling series of notes out of the instrument. “I might just be able to fall for a man who poured seven ryo out at my feet.”

“I’ll pour the sake instead,” Kenshin offered, picking up the bottle and refilling all three cups, “since you’re occupied right now.” 

“You’re so sweet.” Hanahomura flashed that dazzling smile at him again. “For you, only six ryo.”

Kenshin and Shishio steadily ate their way through the snacks and drank their way through the sake, both of which were replenished at regular intervals, while Hanahomura continued to play for them. After the kokyuu, she played a melody on the koto, then the shamisen, and managed to play her way through each of the instruments she’d named as if to show them that she had equal mastery of them all.

Not to mention the stamina to keep it up with such grace and precision. Kenshin felt tired just watching her fingers fly effortlessly over the strings of the shamisen. 

The topic of conversation gradually shifted to the war, and while Kenshin had little desire to spend his free evenings discussing it, he supposed it made sense. The war occupied nearly all of their waking lives. 

“Katsura-san is right, you know.” Shishio rolled a ball of tobacco between his finger and thumb and deftly inserted it into the tiny bowl of his pipe. “We’re going to win. It’s only a matter of time, and a matter of the Bakufu realizing that they’re beaten.”

Hanahomura lifted a long sliver of wood from the tray, lit it at one of the lamps, and gracefully lit Shishio’s pipe for him. “And how will they realize that?” she asked as she extinguished the tiny flame.

“I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately.” Kenshin had sprawled against a pile of cushions, the multiple rounds of exorbitantly expensive sake finally doing the trick of relaxing him. “Seeing as Tokugawa Iemochi went and died and the Bakufu simply replaced him with the new Shogun and are still stubbornly hanging on.”

Hanahomura hid her mouth behind her sleeve at that, perhaps suppressing a smile, before starting a new tune on the koto.

“Stubbornness won’t keep reality at bay for them forever.” Shishio drew deeply at his pipe and exhaled a thin stream of smoke at the ceiling.

“Oh, men can be so very stubborn.” Hanahomura plucked expertly on the strings of the koto, never once breaking stride even when she flashed a very charming smile at Kenshin.

Shishio turned to him, smiling with an odd glint in his eyes. “They’ve gotten complacent. Too used to their position. Perhaps at one point they were the strongest, but what little of that strength that hasn’t been squandered has gone to seed.”

“Well, would someone pass them that message?” Kenshin scowled into his sake cup. “I’ve been trying, but it doesn’t seem to be getting through to them.”

“Oh, I doubt anyone could send the message as eloquently as you’ve done.” Shishio drew at his pipe again. “But we were talking about stubbornness for a reason.”

“Shishio-san knows all about stubbornness.” Hanahomura played one last note on the koto, then placed her hands in her lap. “Let’s play with hanafuda cards now. The two of you are lazing like well-fed housecats, and I’m afraid you just might fall asleep, and that would be terribly dull for me.”

As before, the soft apology drifted through the fusuma before it slid open. The same girl from before smoothly replaced the koto with a deck of hand-painted hanafuda cards. Another girl replenished the empty snack and sake trays, and they both padded out of the room as quietly as they came. 

“Don’t let her talk you into playing for money,” warned Shishio in a very audible whisper. “You won’t have anything left by the time she’s done. Not even the clothes on your back.” 

Hanahomura’s mouth quirked into an exaggerated moue of disapproval. “Shishio-san, how dare you suggest such a thing.” She shuffled the deck with her eyes fixed on Kenshin. “I would never ask a man to get naked in front of me the very first time I met him.”

Kenshin busied himself with pouring sake into all three cups. He had never really learned how to flirt appropriately, or even react to flirting, and he felt it keenly now. 

The thought briefly flitted across his mind that he did have other, far more important things to focus on, but this was supposed to be a party and he had sake cups to hand out.

Shishio, meanwhile, was laughing easily as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe into the small ceramic jar in the wooden tabako-bon beside him. “I apologize, Hanahomura. I was only trying to give my friend the right impression of your skills.” He looked over at Kenshin. “We’re going to lose, just so you know. Very badly.”

Kenshin had absolutely no doubt about that. 

“And besides,” Hanahomura’s eyes sparkled as she dealt the cards and put the remainder in a neat draw pile on the floor, “a true friend would get naked first.” She beamed at Kenshin. “Isn’t that right, Himura-san?”

Kenshin nearly spit his sake out. Hastily he wiped the dribble from his chin and looked over Hanahomura. “You did that on purpose.”

She looked delighted. “Now remember, we’re playing house rules. The loser of each round has to answer a question chosen by the winner.”

Kenshin took a fortifying sip of sake. 

The game seemed easy enough - matching pairs, building sets, and trying to guess what cards the others were collecting - but Kenshin soon realized that it was deceptively complex. And that Hanahomura, as Shishio had suggested, was quite an accomplished player.

“And that’s all four to me.” She smiled, gathering the last few cards together in front of her and tapping the side of her chin with one slender finger as though in deep thought. “Now what should I ask Himura-san and Shishio-san?”

“I’m really glad we’re not playing for money.” Kenshin shook his head. “I’d have no choice but to ask Katsura-san for a raise.”

Shishio snorted mirthfully. “As I said earlier. Ask him for that seven ryo the Bakufu seems to think you’re worth.”

Hanahomura’s smile widened, and she quickly hid her mouth behind her sleeve before saying, “Let’s all share how old we are. I like to know the ages of the men I’m choosing to spend my time with.” She shot a disapproving look at Shishio, but it didn’t hold. “And no embellishing. That would spoil my first victory.”

“I would have told you that without having to lose.” Kenshin felt oddly relieved for the easy question. “I’m seventeen.”

“Nineteen.” Shishio reached for his sake cup, which had naturally been refilled as soon as he’d set it down. “And I still have a good deal of catching up to do before I’m on equal footing with Himura-san.”

“My, my.” Hanahomura shook her head and looked at Kenshin. “Himura-san, haven’t you been with your compatriots for some time?”

“That’s two questions,” Kenshin reminded her.

Hanohumura shrugged delicately. “You did lose the first round to me almost immediately.”

A small frown tugged at the corners of Kenshin’s mouth, but her point was fair enough. “I’ve been with them since my fourteenth summer.”

Her eyebrows raised slightly at that. “To be so terribly dangerous, yet so _young._ ” 

“You haven’t seen him move.” Shishio drained his sake cup and looked appreciatively at Kenshin. “The broadsheets all say he can fly.”

Hanahomura’s eyebrows shot up nearly into her hairline. “Can you fly?”

Kenshin shook his head and tossed off the last of his sake. “That’s three questions. You’ll have to win another round for that one.”

“Is that a challenge?” She smiled mischievously, then held up a hand. “I know, I know. That was another question.”

She seemed to win the next round even more quickly than she’d won the first. Shishio was still staring at his cards in mock disbelief when she turned to Kenshin with that same smile.

“So?” she chirped sweetly. “Can you?”

Kenshin set his completely useless hand of cards down on the floor and reached for a rice cracker. “Not as far as I’m aware. And you never told us how old you are, Hanahomura-dono.” He crunched down on the cracker. “You did say let’s _all_ share how old we are.”

“Oh, very well.” Her lips pursed in a very captivating pout. “Eighteen summers. But why would they say you can fly?”

“Because he moves faster than any of them can,” Shishio interjected. “And his style is called Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, isn’t it?” he asked Kenshin.

“You haven’t won a round either.” Kenshin reached for the bowl of salted fish. “You don’t get to ask questions.”

Hanahomura didn’t bother to hide her laughter behind her sleeve this time. And then she won round three before Kenshin had time to swallow the bit of salted fish he had been chewing.

“If I hadn’t played against you before...” Shishio sighed and set his cards down. “That is to say, if I hadn’t had the pleasure of losing spectacularly to you before, then I’d swear you were cheating.”

“But you know I don’t have to,” laughed Hanahomura easily, scooping up the cards and elegantly shuffling them together. “All right, new question. Himura-san, I understand you have a family. How old are your children?”

Kenshin’s face warmed pleasantly at the thought. “I have a son, and he’s seen seventeen months so far.”

“How sweet,” Hanahomura said softly, before turning her gaze on Shishio. “Now I strongly suspect Shishio-san is not the marrying type, so what do you plan to do when all of this is over?” She paused, then, “And I don’t mean when this game, that you will continue to lose spectacularly to me, is over. I mean this war.”

Kenshin raised an eyebrow at that and looked at Shishio over the rim of his sake cup.

“Retirement wouldn’t suit me,” Shishio smiled toothily and set down his own recently-drained cup to be magically refilled. “And you’re right, I’m not the marrying type. But I’m also not the type to be happy while there’s still a need for swords.”

He looked at Kenshin with clear appreciation, as if to say that he knew that Kenshin was such a man at heart as well.

“But there’s bound to be room in the new government for someone who helped put it in power,” Shishio continued with a smile of deep satisfaction. “Room for someone who knows what needs to be done to create a new order out of the aftermath of such a chaotic time.”

“Rebuilding a government would be far more complicated than tearing it down,” Hanahomura mused, and Kenshin looked over at her appreciatively. “I understand the Americans are dealing with such a thing right now, and the Europeans have had several civil wars on their continent and have had to rebuild from the chaos.”

Kenshin blinked. He was fairly certain he wouldn’t know how to find America on a map, and he knew nothing of the Europeans and their multiple wars.

“Hmmm.” Shishio seemed to exude satisfaction with that sound. “Chaos is our business.” 

Kenshin tossed off his sake and allowed Hanahomura to refill his cup. 

Shishio indicated Kenshin with a tilt of his head. “Himura Battousai-san and I are men whose sole purpose it is to sow chaos.” His smile became shark-like once more. “Who better to know how to keep chaos at bay than a man who understands it so completely?”

“Perhaps I would be terrible at keeping chaos at bay.” Kenshin sipped at his sake now. It had already gone to his head, and the hour of the tiger had long since given way to the rabbit. “Since I understand it so completely?”

“You?” Shishio laughed, and there was the hint of an edge in it, like a sword bound in cotton batting. “I think you would prefer to distance yourself from it as quickly as possible after the war ends.” His eyes locked with Kenshin’s, and it was as though they were boring into him. 

Hanahomura watched with interest.

“I think,” Shishio said softly, “that the closer you are to the chaos - to the killing - the more you cannot help but become a part of it.” He smiled that razor smile again. “Once a hitokiri, always a hitokiri. In deed or in spirit, the two of us will always be what we are.”

Before Kenshin could respond, Hanahomura cut in with a bright, “I’m ready to win round four now.” Swiftly she dealt out the cards. “I have so many more questions, and I’m simply bursting with curiosity.”

She won rounds four and five quickly enough, but this time asked completely innocuous questions about food or seasons or somesuch. Kenshin barely remembered his answers as he was giving them. His mind had become occupied with other, more troubling thoughts. 

Best not to dwell there.

He surprised himself by somehow winning round six. 

“Oh.” Hanahomura lowered her cards, mouth quirking into a smile. “All right.”

“Well, would you look at that.” Shishio was grinning broadly. “Another skill mastered, then, sempai? What are you going to ask?”

“I’ve mastered nothing.” Kenshin set his cards down. “Certainly not this.”

“Beginner’s luck, then?” Hanahomura crooned. “You’re far too modest, Himura-san.” She waited a beat. “And adorable.”

The sun would be coming up soon. They wouldn’t have time for another round, and Kenshin could feel exhaustion steadily creeping over him.

“Your name,” he finally said. “I’d like to know your given name.”

A look of startled surprise crossed her face for a fraction of an instant, to be replaced by a smile whose warmth was unmistakably genuine.

“You’re a singular man, Himura-san,” she said in a voice as warm as the smile. “Komagata Yumi is my name.” She paused a moment, then leaned fractionally towards him. “But you wouldn’t go away from here without telling me yours, would you?”

“Even though I won this round?” Kenshin returned the smile. “It’s Kenshin. Himura Kenshin.”

Yumi’s eyebrows raised slightly, and her mouth quirked in a mirthful smile. “Kenshin? What a perfect name for a swordsman. That can’t be coincidence, can it?”

Shishio laughed, though his mouth was mercifully empty of the senbei rice cracker he had been about to bite into.

“Who can say?” Kenshin shook his head. “I’m honored to have been invited into your company, Yumi-dono, but if I’m not careful, the hour of the rabbit will give way to the dragon.” He rose to his feet and reached for his katana, sliding it back into his belt. “And my work keeps me off the streets in daylight.”

“Oh, dear.” Again Yumi pouted quite attractively, but gracefully regained her feet a moment later. “I suppose I shall have to say goodnight to the pair of you, then.”

“Regrettably.” Shishio likewise stood and replaced his katana. “It’s always a great honor to see you, Yumi, and a tremendous pleasure as well.”

“You’ll make me blush right through the paint.” She smiled as the fusuma slid open at the hands of the young girl outside. “I do hope the two of you surprise me with another visit soon.”

“When you’re in Shimabara again, we certainly will,” Shishio said. “I doubt we’ll be making the trip to Edo anytime soon.”

The three of them bowed in unison, and then Yumi waved jauntily before the girl escorted Kenshin and Shishio downstairs and outside the Hakusuiya.

Kenshin squinted in the weak twilight. “I think I’ve had far too much to drink,” he muttered. “The Shinsengumi had better be off the streets by now.”

Shishio snorted with laughter beside him. “For their own sakes.”

“Yes.” Kenshin’s expression darkened. “I’m not in the mood to deal with any of them, especially the third unit. Not when I’ve drunk what must’ve been a year’s salary in expensive sake.”

“At least.” Shishio chuckled as they headed down the street, toward the Shimabara gate. “But what’s this about the third unit? What’s so special about them?”

A scowl twisted Kenshin’s mouth. “Their captain has stubbornly refused to die.”

He frowned the moment the words were out of his mouth, and he reminded himself that it had been a very long day and he had drunk far too much. 

“Is that so?” Shishio sounded intrigued. “I’ll have to remember that.” He grinned savagely. “Perhaps on a slow night, when I’ve got nothing else to do…”

“Killing him is my job,” Kenshin said immediately. “It’s almost personal at this point.”

Shishio smiled a predator’s toothy smile. “Isn’t it always?” He chuckled again. “There’s hardly anything more personal that can pass between two men than the death of one at the hands of the other.”

Kenshin bit back a sigh. 

He couldn’t let himself think on that too deeply. Not right then, and perhaps not until the war had finally ended. He knew very well that there was a blood-drenched list of names - so many names - and that, one day, he’d be called on to account for each and every one of them.

But until then…

“That would be the benefit of remaining in the shadows,” he said. “I haven’t heard word of you on the street at all. Our employer,” for he would never say the man’s name aloud on a public street, “has done a much more thorough job of keeping you obscured.”

It must have been a trick of the light, or perhaps of all the sake, because Kenshin could have sworn that Shishio looked positively crestfallen for a moment. But then he seemed to brush it off and replied, “Or perhaps my targets simply haven’t been as high-profile as yours once were.”

“Doubtful. He’s always had a long list, and with these ever-changing foreign alliances, I can’t see the list shrinking anytime soon.”

The British had, after all, been on their side to start. Their most recent defection to the Bakufu’s side was a both a stinging blow and a damned annoyance. They had helped to arm Bakufu soldiers with Western rifles, after all.

“It would be helpful if he’d add to the list whoever is dealing with the foreign powers.” Kenshin couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. 

Shishio, back in his previous good humor once more, snorted derisively. “I’d be happy enough to do that job even without being paid for it.” He shook his head. “I’ve heard more than enough tales of foreign weapons being used against us.”

They passed under the Shimabara gate and out onto the main street. 

“If you ask me,” Shishio continued, “it’s only a matter of time before there are foreign soldiers as well, and then we’ll never be rid of the red-faced gaijin.”

Kenshin quirked an eyebrow at that. “Let’s hope that not even the Shogun is that short-sighted. From what I’ve heard about the British in China, once they set foot in a country, they never leave it.”

And truthfully, an influx of foreign soldiers could easily overwhelm and eventually crush the Ishin Shishi. There would be no coming back from that kind of defeat.

“And yet their weapons and their armies are strong,” Shishio mused. “Perhaps we ought to consider arming ourselves with Western weapons as well as our own.” He pulled a face. “Apart from the Kiheitai, of course.”

Kenshin’s hand unconsciously strayed to his daisho. “I’ve no desire to train on Western weapons, and certainly no desire to see unskilled soldiers accidentally firing on innocent people. Or even burning the city to the ground again.”

“You wouldn’t need to train on Western weapons.” Shishio snorted again. “Not when your skills are already the stuff of legend. But these weapons are out there already, and if we’re to avoid becoming another Western puppet state, we’ll have to become stronger than the Westerners.”

“Let’s focus on removing our enemies from power first.” Abruptly he changed the subject, turning toward Shishio with a small smile. “It was a pleasure to be in Yumi-dono’s company. You’re lucky to know her.”

“Aren’t I, though?” Shishio smiled proudly - perhaps even smugly. “She’s a rare woman. I could never have afforded an evening like that with her if I hadn’t known her well beforehand. And she’s quite particular as to the company she keeps.”

“Well, she’s particularly chosen to keep your company.” Kenshin waited a beat, then, “Are you sure you’re not the marrying type then? Even when her contract ends?”

“I doubt it,” chuckled Shishio. “Though there are still a good number of years on her contract, if I remember correctly. And who knows what can change in that much time?”

“I didn’t think I would ever marry either,” Kenshin said honestly. “My work seemed to preclude that sort of future. And now I have a son.”

His face warmed at the thought of him. At his toddler’s voice murmuring “Bye bye, Toucha,” while waving a tiny little hand. His heart contracted fiercely; he hadn’t even been gone a full day yet, and he missed his family terribly.

“Plenty can change in a small amount of time.”

Shishio chuckled again, darkly. “Everything can change in an instant. Just ask Iizuka.”

Kenshin scowled. “I’d rather not spare any thought for him at all.”

“Then I suppose it’s fortunate that this is where I have to go my own way for the evening.” Shishio gestured down a street off to his left. “But we really must do this again sometime, sempai. It’s been pleasant.”

“Indeed. Send Yumi-dono my regards when you see her next.”

They bowed once more, perhaps less precisely than they might have had expensive sake not been running through their veins, before parting ways.

Kenshin was nearly weaving with exhaustion by the time he stumbled into the Yazuya, and he was asleep the second he settled against the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> I feel like I have a LOT of notes today, but first, yay yay, Yumi's made an appearance! There is absolutely no possible way that could complicate things further down the line.
> 
> Okay, so speaking of Yumi, we already know she was a very popular oiran, which was a high-class sex worker who had some ability to choose her own clients and also had all the artistic and social skills also expected of a geisha. In other words, they were very highly trained, but they were also contracted to their brothels for a term of 10 years. (And no, geisha and oiran weren't the same thing, but they were expected to have the same skill levels. Geisha, though, weren't sex workers and didn't live in brothels.)
> 
> Kamuro girls were generally between the ages of 5-9 and sold to brothels by desperate parents. They were the "little sisters" of oiran, in that they were expected to serve her "big sister," and in return, the oiran would provide for her clothes, food, and education and care for her until she was ready to become an oiran. If an oiran didn't work, a kamuro girl didn't eat. 
> 
> I like the way Issendai.com describes them: "The streets were lively with brightly dressed little girls going to and fro, carrying orders to merchants, calling on vendors, delivering gifts, trading jokes with the locals, buying snacks for their older sisters to eat hurriedly between clients. They were participants in the life of [the red light districts] just as much as their older sisters..."
> 
> I mean, if you think about it too long, it's all pretty horrifying, but... uh... I have no way of ending that sentence.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> “I understand the Americans are dealing with such a thing right now.” Yumi is referring to the American Civil War. The fact that it was going on roughly around the same time as the Bakumatsu is why the American powers rather abruptly pulled out of the conflict, while the British, French, etc, stuck around. 
> 
> The captain of the third unit of the Shinsengumi that Kenshin mentioned is, of course, Saitou Hajime, and we do know that he stubbornly refuses to die. Sorry, Kenshin, you'll have to deal with this guy repeatedly. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> So, as always, your commentary is what keeps me posting week after week, so LAY IT ON ME, BABY. I love hearing from you. And you can always poke me on tumblr at frostyemma. Same Bat-name, same Bat-channel.


	20. Jiyu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jiyu,” Hiko replied with a nod. He gestured for Kenshin to come forward. “This is my apprentice, Kenshin.”
> 
> Jiyu did look up at that, knife hovering over a half-shaved carrot.
> 
> Kenshin bowed and murmured a polite greeting in a very quiet voice, and Hiko decided it was best to leave the full introduction until later. How much later, he didn’t consider.
> 
> “Apprentice,” Jiyu said softly, and it was hard to decipher the meaning in his tone. He rose from his crouch and set the knife aside, regarding Kenshin and Hiko in turn. “Well, your visit is carefully timed as always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG OL' GLOSSARY  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government   
> Samue : monk’s work clothes, consisting of a gi-style top and loose pants  
> Obousan : honorific for addressing a monk   
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Genpuku : boy’s coming of age ceremony, occurring between the ages of 11-21  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Daimyo : feudal lords who served the Shogun  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood

**Keiou 2-3  
(1866-1867)**

When the first snow of the season fell, blanketing the ground in its obscuring mantle of white, Hiko realized that Kenshin would not be back until at least the following spring.

“Good thing we already did all the pickling,” Enishi muttered over a bowlful of breakfast porridge.

“Pickling!” Kenichi agreed, and promptly tried to fling a spoonful of porridge across the room, only for Tomoe to calmly reach out and lower the boy’s hand. 

It was difficult to know how to feel about Kenshin’s continued absence. Especially when his presence lingered on in the form of the family he’d left behind in Hiko’s care. The family that had grown around him and enveloped him as a fast-growing tree would envelop an iron post. The family that he hoped would provide Kenshin all the motivation he needed to come back from the war, if not unscathed, then at least alive.

“Jiji!” Kenichi scooched forward and waved his spoon close enough to Hiko’s face to catch his attention. “Eat! Jiji, eat!”

A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Tomoe’s mouth. “I believe he’s reminding you not to let your porridge get cold.”

“Is he, now?” Hiko looked down at the tiny boy and arched an eyebrow. He supposed that the hint of a smile might have flickered at the corners of his eyes. “Just because I’m not trying to toss it at the walls doesn’t mean I’m not eating it, bozu.”

He ate another spoonful for emphasis.

Kenichi clapped his approval. “Good!”

Kenshin’s son had gravitated towards him in a way that Hiko hadn’t known how to deal with. He’d never had any sort of close contact with a baby before, unless his half-formed memories of his own family were counted. And as Hiko hadn’t seen any of them since his ninth year (one notable exception aside, of course) he never did count them.

But Kenichi had attached himself to Hiko. And, much to his own surprise, Hiko had taken it in stride. 

Perhaps it had been the fact that he had been unfailingly able to quiet the child down when no one else had been able to. Perhaps it had been his inexplicable ability to lull Kenichi to sleep in his arms. Or perhaps it was simply Kenshin’s absence that had forced the boy to bond with the only grown man in the house.

Hiko wondered, for the thousandth time, if he had made a terrible mistake in giving his idiot apprentice his blessing to go back to the war.

“You’re not eating,” Enishi said around a mouthful of porridge. “Don’t make a baby mad at you.”

Hiko rolled his eyes and very pointedly did not take another spoonful.

As loath as he was to admit it, he had felt his idiot apprentice’s absence every day since he’d left. And every day, he’d had to contend with the possibility that he’d been wrong in relenting. Hadn’t he sworn, after all, not to let Kenshin go back during those early months when he had first returned to Atago with his wife? And hadn’t he been thoroughly convinced that keeping Kenshin there was the right thing to do?

“Eat, eat!” Kenichi encouraged, and then as if to demonstrate, he clumsily jammed his spoon into his bowl and managed to get most of the porridge into his mouth. 

The old argument inside Hiko’s mind began anew. The lives of the innocent people of Suo-Oshima would have been lost if Kenshin had not gone back. How many lives had Kenshin taken? The Bakufu had turned on its own people. Would the new government be any different? The innocent needed Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu to protect them. Kenshin’s family needed him to be with them. 

Was there a right thing to do? Or was life simply a series of awful choices in which every decision meant some sort of loss?

“Fresh fish tonight, I think,” Tomoe mused. “Before the river freezes over and it becomes more difficult.”

Enishi pulled a face. “More difficult for _me_ , you mean.”

As Enishi groused, Hiko’s mind showed him images of Kenshin teaching the boy how to catch fish in the frozen river. Of Kenshin patiently weathering the boy’s incessant questions and chatterings, allowing Enishi to wear down the wall of spiteful anger he’d hidden himself behind for so long.

Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu had been beneficial to both Enishi and Kenshin, though for very different reasons. But every day forced Hiko closer to a confrontation and a reckoning - the style exacted a heavy toll on its practitioners, and it was a toll he found himself increasingly reluctant to pay.

He would never forget the end of his own apprenticeship. The mind-numbing, heart-freezing, gut-sliding terror as his shishou dropped the cloak to the ground and revealed his full strength at long last. The sheer, all-consuming panic of realizing that the man who had spent years training and raising him had been holding back all this time. That he would die at the hands of the man who had taught him everything he knew.

And then, the slow and devastating realization that in his desperation to survive, he had killed his shishou instead.

He suddenly wanted a drink of sake very badly. 

The sun had not risen to its full height yet, would not do so for hours, but he wanted to numb himself of the sudden wrenching knowledge that he had given himself everything to lose. By letting Kenshin into his life, by letting Kenshin’s family take him in and treat him as one of their own, he had made it impossible to fully pass on the secrets of the art. 

How could he willingly subject either of his apprentices to what he had experienced all those years ago? And how could he force the others to suffer through it as well?

He suddenly wondered if Jiyu had been correct all along…

…  
…  
...

_It had taken three days of walking to make it to the temple._

Asukaderaji lay in a wide valley surrounded by rice fields and a sparse handful of small farmhouses. There were a few villages within walking distance, but none within sight of the sprawling temple complex.

As they passed through the open gateway into the courtyard, the boys playing on the hard-packed earth looked up from their energetic games. They were shabby to a number, but clean, well-fed, and (if their expressions were anything to judge by) happy. A lone monk, clad in the traditional, linen samue of dark blue, was patiently sweeping the stone walkway that ringed the courtyard with a rude straw broom. He noted their approach as well, but did not pause in his work.

Hiko turned to Kenshin, who had remained almost entirely silent throughout the journey. He was taking in his surroundings with large and solemn eyes, not straying more than a few steps away from Hiko.

“I know one of the monks here.” Hiko gestured for Kenshin to follow him toward one of the buildings. His brow furrowed. “Though I haven’t spoken to him for some time.”

It had been nearly two years, in fact. 

The last time he had come here, he had been aiming to put as much distance as possible between himself and the grave of his master on the lonely mountainside near Morioka. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but his feet had carried him to this place with no input from his conscious mind. He had found no real answers here, but at least it had been a familiar place to rest in.

With familiar company.

He led Kenshin to the back of the temple complex, to one of the smaller buildings that contained the monks’ residence. They entered a large, meticulously clean kitchen, where several children and one monk - clad in the same blue samue as the man outside - were peeling or dicing a variety of vegetables. 

Several of the children looked over at Hiko and giggled. The monk, however, didn’t look up or even pause in his careful, yet efficient peeling of carrots.

“Hello, Seijuro.” He dropped the final shaving of carrot into the bucket at his feet, then started on the next carrot in the pile. “I heard you coming, but I didn’t realize you were bringing us a little guest as well.”

“Jiyu,” Hiko replied with a nod. He gestured for Kenshin to come forward. “This is my apprentice, Kenshin.”

Jiyu did look up at that, knife hovering over a half-shaved carrot.

Kenshin bowed and murmured a polite greeting in a very quiet voice, and Hiko decided it was best to leave the full introduction until later. How much later, he didn’t consider.

“Apprentice,” Jiyu said softly, and it was hard to decipher the meaning in his tone. He rose from his crouch and set the knife aside, regarding Kenshin and Hiko in turn. “Well, your visit is carefully timed as always.”

One of the boys snickered behind his hand. “Because it’s almost lunchtime.”

A small smile flickered across Jiyu’s mouth. “Indeed.”

Hiko looked around at their sparse surroundings, at the well-scrubbed but shabby children, and at the contented smile on Jiyu’s face, and felt at as much of a loss as he always did when visiting this place. 

“How many new children this year?” he asked, his eyes on Kenshin.

“Several.” Jiyu clasped his hands loosely behind his back. “The same issues continue to ravage the countryside. Many parents have brought their sons to us.”

Kenshin flinched. Hiko didn’t miss the movement, and from his expression, neither did Jiyu. 

“Kenshin-kun,” he said gently, “can you peel carrots?”

“Yes, Obousan,” Kenshin murmured.

“Would you like to peel carrots in my place?” Jiyu asked, gesturing to the bucket and the small pile of carrots next to it. 

Kenshin nodded, though he looked up at Hiko. Realizing that the boy was waiting for his permission, Hiko gave a curt nod and watched his apprentice pick up the knife and go to work. 

“Natsuo,” Jiyu said to one of the older boys, “you’re in charge.” 

The boy’s face split into a wide, satisfied grin, and Jiyu added, “Do make sure lunch is ready on time. I’m counting on you.”

Jiyu gestured for Hiko to follow him, and they set off together through the temple grounds. At the far edge of the complex, at the top of a flight of stairs, was a small elevated alcove with a low stone bench. Another monk had helpfully left a pot of tea and a pair of earthenware cups there.

As always, Hiko allowed himself a moment to dwell on how much he would have preferred sake. And, as always, he grudgingly accepted the tea.

“It’s good for you. Healthy.” Jiyu blew steam from the surface of his cup. “Locally grown.”

“There’s plenty of locally-grown rice out there,” Hiko groused as he took a sip. “Why don’t you try fermenting some?”

“If I did, perhaps your visits would increase in frequency.” Jiyu didn’t spare him a glance. “Niisan.”

Hiko rolled his eyes. Even if his brother couldn’t see it, the action had become enough of a habit for it to be almost reflexive by now.

“Don’t tell me you’re longing for more family reunions.” He drained his cup. “There’s a reason we’re not Kakunoshin and Kadenokoji any longer.”

“And if Kazushige were here, the three brothers would be reunited.” A smile flickered across Jiyu’s lips, but didn’t land. “Would that not be an interesting meeting?”

“Interesting.” Hiko snorted, wishing even more fervently for a real drink. “That’s a pleasant and diplomatic word for it.” 

Jiyu sipped his tea. 

Hiko looked away from the temple grounds, scowling. “He always behaved as though he’d be an emperor instead of a rural samurai on a scrubby piece of dirt in the middle of nowhere.” He shook his head, the scowl deepening. “I’m happy for it to remain just the pair of us every handful of years, thank you.”

In response, Jiyu merely hummed into his cup.

“Don’t tell me you’ve heard from him as well.” Hiko’s scowl became a glower. “I always knew he’d become insufferable once the old man died.”

“Sometimes I have letters.” Jiyu set his cup down. “Having a consistent place to send them for nearly fifteen summers helps with that.”

“I go where the work is.” Hiko frowned sourly. “You ought to know that by now.”

“I know that you left behind your old name a mere two summers ago.” Jiyu lifted the teapot and carefully refilled both cups. “But it seems the burden of doing so has left quite a toll.”

Hiko stopped short, his mouth shutting silently. He reached out for the tea and swigged a scalding mouthful in an attempt to focus on something else.

“And now you have an apprentice,” Jiyu murmured. He didn’t look at Hiko. “How old is the boy?”

“Seven summers,” Hiko muttered. He was already thinking better of having come here. Jiyu knew him too well, knew too much about him for this to go well.

“A little boy,” Jiyu said quietly. “Only a year older than I was when our parents brought me here.” He sat with that for a moment, then abruptly moved on. “I know how dire the situation is, not just in Asuka and Nara, but all over. I assume the boy’s parents are dead?”

“Cholera,” Hiko grunted, not wanting to spend too long thinking about the parents who had had so little use for their spare sons that they had bequeathed one to a monastery and one to an itinerant swordsman, both before the age of ten years. 

“He’d been sold into slavery,” he continued moodily. “The slave caravan was massacred by bandits. By the time I arrived, the boy was the only one left alive.”

For a long moment, Jiyu said nothing. Strains of childish laughter floated up into the alcove, along with the sounds of rapidly scuffling feet. 

Little boys at play.

“Boys have been brought to us for so many reasons,” Jiyu finally said. “Some of them have stories full of horror, and it takes years to help them through their nightmares.” A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “But some of us end up taking our vows here and making this our home.”

Hiko’s grunt was noncommittal. “Some of us have taken other vows entirely.”

Vows he had tried unsuccessfully to fulfill. Vows that might perhaps be incapable of ever being fulfilled. Vows to a dead man who bore the name of another dead man from generations ago - a dead man who had likewise been unable to fulfill them.

“And home?” Hiko snorted, but turned his eyes away, suddenly unable to meet his brother’s gaze. “Such a place does not exist.”

“This could be the boy’s home,” Jiyu said simply.

“Until it’s sacked.” Hiko turned back to Jiyu, his voice flat and his expression hard. “A tiny bubble in a field of nettles can’t go forever without being burst.”

He looked down at the courtyard. Searched for his new apprentice’s distinctive hair, and found him as he emerged from the kitchen with the other boys who had been preparing lunch.

“I can give him the power not only to never be the victim of this world again, but to protect others from the same fate he suffered.” He turned to Jiyu. “This place can’t give him that.”

“Certainly,” Jiyu agreed. “But it can give him stability and the companionship of boys his age, many who have dealt with similar traumas in their lives.”

“And can it give him anything more than companionship and commiseration?” Hiko gestured aimlessly. “Can it give him something besides a brotherhood of broken children? Children who can all reassure him that they know exactly how it feels to be victims of this evil world without having ever been able to stand up against it?”

Quietly Jiyu said, “Are you best prepared to raise a traumatized little boy?”

Hiko met his brother’s eyes. “I am prepared to train him. To sink him so deeply in the study of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu that he will have the ability to prevent his traumas from ever happening again.”

Jiyu studied him for a moment. “Is that so?”

Hiko gestured impatiently. “He can become strong. Strong enough to never know helplessness again. Or pain. Or loss.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Jiyu didn’t break his gaze. “Tell me, then, how his apprenticeship will end?”

Hiko simply glared at his brother for a very long moment.

“Have you discovered a new way of concluding it?” Jiyu continued. “One that would spare the boy any helplessness or pain or loss? One that would prevent his traumas from ever happening again?”

“He can succeed where I’ve failed,” Hiko ground out through clenched teeth. “Even as a young boy, he’s better equipped than I ever was. All he lacks is the strength to bring what’s in his heart to reality.” 

Jiyu merely looked at him.

Hiko sighed. “And I can at least ensure that he won’t miss me when I’m gone.”

“I see,” Jiyu said softly. “You think you’ve found the way to avoid suffering. For either of you.”

Hiko looked at his brother.

“I’m tired of living in this world,” he said simply. “Tired of seeing the death, the needless violence, the cruelty, the capriciousness, the _randomness_ of it all. I’m tired of not being able to do anything about it. I’m tired of cutting down evil men only to turn around and find twice as many as there were before.” 

He sighed again. “The boy is different. He has a different heart. A better heart. He dug a field full of graves with his bare hands rather than let either the slaves or the bandits who slew them suffer the indignity of lying out in the open for the animals.” He shook his head. “This is for the best.”

Jiyu nodded. “When you find a way, then, to avoid traumatizing the boy further and adding to his suffering, do let me know.” 

_A bell chimed in the courtyard below, and abruptly he stood and turned to Hiko. “Come, Seijuro. It’s lunchtime.”_

…  
…  
...

With the first thaw of the new season came the smell of spring in the air. The frost was off the ground as if by magic one morning, and that very day they headed out to the garden.

They packed away the cold frame and cover. They turned over the still-hard soil in preparation for planting. The weather, after all, would grow steadily warmer. The spring rains would begin soon.

The wheel never stopped turning, Hiko thought as he dug and loosened the hard-packed dirt. Life itself was a never-ending circle, and every experience within it simply a circle of smaller circumference.

Enishi worked beside him, his lean frame taller now in his twelfth year. His strength and endurance had improved significantly from the year and a half of training he had undergone, and Hiko had to admit that his skills had kept suit. The boy had turned out to be a natural swordsman - a more than adequate apprentice.

Kenichi stayed beside them as they worked. 

The little boy was not yet through his second year, but his small hands reached out to touch the tools and the earth, investigating everything with the single-minded curiosity only a child could ever possess. 

Hiko watched as he stuck his already grubby hands into a pile of freshly-turned earth and came out clutching a struggling worm, which he inspected with fascinated eyes before carefully replacing it and patting dirt gently down over it.

“Bye bye, Snake-san,” he whispered.

Enishi snorted. “It’s a worm.” When Kenichi simply looked up at him with wide, thoughtful eyes, the boy sighed and added, “So it should be ‘Bye bye, Worm-san'.”

“Worm-san,” Kenichi repeated seriously.

Hiko stopped himself somehow from rolling his eyes so ferociously that they fell right out of his head and went rolling away. He made do with a snort, a shake of the head, and a quickly-concealed smile of amusement.

Days later, in the early evening, Kenshin returned home for a visit, which - though Hiko would never say such a thing aloud and would gladly leave such verbal musings to Tomoe - brought a feeling of completeness to the household.

Completeness, as well as a sense of foreboding.

“The Shogun stubbornly refuses to resign his position.” Kenshin stared moodily into the dull embers flickering in the hearth. “Despite the riots in the cities. Despite the fact that Emperor Koumei died this past winter.”

Hiko, Tomoe, and Enishi sat around the hearth as well, nursing cups of tea, while Kenichi slumbered peacefully in Tomoe’s futon. Tomoe had put together a bowl of ochazuke for Kenshin, though he had barely touched it. 

“If the fool won’t step aside voluntarily, he’ll find himself dragged out of his castle and torn limb from limb.” Hiko sipped at his tea. “The people surprise me, to tell the truth. I wouldn’t have expected rioting.”

“Even the most powerless have a point beyond which they can’t be pushed,” Tomoe offered. “Though the Emperor’s son may not be a great help to either side, considering his age.”

Enishi frowned. “He’s fourteen.”

Tomoe nodded. “Yes.”

Enishi’s frown deepened. “That’s only two years older than I am.” When that didn’t seem to impress his sister in the slightest, he gestured impatiently to Kenshin. “And the same age as when he went off to be a hitokiri.”

Kenshin didn’t flinch at that or even look up from the hearth. “The new Emperor has never left the palace. He continues his studies of literature and poetry.”

Hiko snorted. “Probably hasn’t even had his genpuku yet.”

“No,” Kenshin murmured. “He hasn’t.”

“Your ochazuke is getting cold,” Tomoe gently reminded Kenshin. “Aren’t you hungry?”

Kenshin glanced at her. “Yes,” he said automatically, reaching for the spoon and taking a mechanical bite. “Of course. Thank you.”

Tomoe’s eyes met Hiko’s for an instant, and he caught the look of concern in them.

He wasn’t surprised. 

Kenshin’s single year as a hitokiri had nearly broken his mind. A two-year stint on the front lines of a particularly savage war was likely to do a great deal of damage to his apprentice’s psyche as well. And yet he had given Kenshin his approval - his blessing, even - to return to the war, knowing full well the wholesale slaughter he had sent him back into. Knowing that the scars the war would leave on Kenshin’s mind would dwarf the one on his face. 

Because the simple truth was that Kenshin had been right: the entire purpose of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu was to protect the innocent, and when the enemy of the innocent was an entire government, Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu was the only thing that might even the odds.

And yet the strain of fighting was plain to see in every aspect of his apprentice’s bearing. He carried with him the weight of every life he had taken in combat, every comrade he had seen fall, and every innocent life - imagined or otherwise - that he had failed to save. Hiko knew exactly how heavy such a weight was; he had been carrying it himself for as long as he could remember.

He had once thought that in handing over Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu to Kenshin - in relinquishing his cloak and his name and his life - that he would be free of the burden. That he would no longer have to stagger under its growing encumbrance every day, and that he might face his next life (or whatever awaited him) with relief.

But what sort of burden would he shift onto Kenshin’s shoulders with that decision? And would his apprentice, heavily laden with his own traumas as he was, be able to bear up under it?

Was it even conscionable for Hiko to expect it of him, when Hiko himself had nearly collapsed under it?

…  
…  
...

_He could not remember how he had managed to find his way._

There had been long days of walking, his feet leading him in a direction he had initially been unsure of but had not cared enough to try to ascertain. There had been the bleary haze of endless step after step, his mind clouded by sleepless nights - for who could sleep with such dreams waiting for him? - and nothing in his stomach but sake.

The sake was necessary. It quieted the screaming inside his mind.

His legs felt limp as udon under the weight of his shishou’s cloak. His heart and mind and soul staggered under the weight of his shishou’s name. And by the time he realized where he was going, he had no strength left to fight against the pull of the place that was drawing him in like a whirlpool.

His boots crunched on the loose dust of the pathway to Asukaderaji.

Kadenokoji was there. Kadenokoji would be able to… what? Help? He snorted loudly and derisively at the very idea, startling a few nearby birds and the blue-garbed monk who was sweeping diligently at the ground before the gate. The man opened his mouth as though to say something, but his words never reached the air.

“Kadenokoji?” he called, perhaps a bit loudly, but his brother needed to hear him. “Kadenokoji!”

He stumbled through the gate, right past the monk who was either too terrified or too smart to attempt to stop him, all the while screaming his brother’s name at increasingly belligerent volumes.

Several boys stopped whatever game they had been playing in the courtyard to stare up at him with wide eyes. A few other monks, all similarly dressed in blue work clothes, likewise froze in place.

“Where is he?” he demanded, reaching out a hand to seize the nearest monk by the front of his gi. “Where is my brother?”

“I’m right here, Kakunoshin,” a calm voice said on the other side of him. “And you are terrifying people.”

He whirled, perhaps a bit unsteadily, and only belatedly realized that he’d forgotten to let go of the monk’s gi. The fellow had been awkwardly dragged around with him, and he released him with a snort.

“Not _Kakunoshin_ anymore,” he slurred. “Hiko Seijuro, now.”

Kadenokoji looked at him with an expression that Kakunoshin - no, _Hiko Seijuro_ now - was incapable of reading in that moment and then reached for the sake jug dangling from his free hand.

“Is there anything left in that?” 

“Why?” Hiko snorted. “Do you want some?” He gestured with his free hand at the monastic trappings around him. “Didn’t think they’d approve.”

Kadenokoji merely passed the jug to one of the boys who had clustered around him. “Daisuke, bring this to the kitchen.” To two other boys, he added, “Ryota and Yoshi, bring a bucket of water and some tea to the pilgrims’ quarters. Everyone else,” he waved them off, “find something better to do.”

A lot of scuffling, bowing, and giggling later, the boys dispersed, and Kadenokoji gave his brother another long, unreadable look.

“You should come with me.”

Hiko nearly asked “Why?” again, but it turned into a pronounced scoff on the way out of his mouth. He settled for following Kadenokoji, placing his feet carefully and deliberately as he walked through the monastery in his brother’s wake.

The pilgrims’ quarters, as it turned out, were thankfully pilgrim-free at the moment. Hiko simply stood there, trying not to weave or overbalance. After so many days of walking, it felt strange to stand still. It was almost as if he’d lose his balance if he didn’t move…

He leaned against one of the support poles for the engawa and began yanking at his left boot, trying unsuccessfully to pull it off his foot. While he was doing that, two of the boys from earlier appeared with the bucket of water and the tea and then spent long enough staring at Hiko that he felt compelled to roar “What?!”

They scurried off, giggling.

Kadenokoji watched without comment. 

“I hate people,” Hiko slurred as he finally removed his stubborn boot, yanked off the other one in much shorter order, and threw them both onto the engawa. “I never could understand what you saw in them.”

Head swiveling around to take in his surroundings, he finally spied the bucket of water. Lurching towards it, he grabbed it and upended it over his head, then set it down on the wooden planks of the engawa with an echoing clunk. 

Everything about the last several days seemed to be catching up with him at once. He was suddenly aware of exhaustion - utter, bone-deep exhaustion such as he had not felt for years. The room seemed to swim before his eyes, the floor unsteady beneath his feet, and his legs would not support his weight any longer. 

He was dimly aware of being led into the adjoining room, of sinking down to his knees and then collapsing onto his side. And then he was aware of nothing for a long time.

The room was dark and cool and wet when he opened his eyes. It took him a moment to realize that a washcloth had been placed over the upper half of his face. 

His arm was sluggish to respond when he reached up to peel the wet cloth away, and as he forced it to move, he became aware of a persistent, pulsating throb behind his eyeballs and inside his skull. It was nauseatingly painful - painful enough to make him shut his eyes again and attempt to will himself back into unconsciousness. 

“That won’t work.” Kadenokoji’s voice came from a corner of the room. “You’re awake now.”

Hiko pressed the wet cloth back to his forehead. “I don’t feel like I should be.”

“Why is that?” A slight rustling of clothing told him Kadenokoji was on his feet, and then the shoji slid open and he was surprised not to feel any sunlight on his face.

Just how long had he slept?

“We’re well into the hour of the rooster,” Kadenokoji explained. “You’ve been asleep most of the afternoon.”

Hiko grunted, shifting his position. Something entangled his arms and legs, and eventually he realized that Kadenokoji must have thrown a blanket over him at some point.

“I need more sake,” he muttered.

His brother ignored that, instead asking, “When is the last time you’ve had a meal? Or a bath?”

“Priorities, Kadenokoji.” Hiko looked sourly over at his brother, then quickly squeezed his eyes shut against a fresh wave of pain and nausea.

“I’m called Jiyu now.” His brother knelt down next to him in one fluid motion. “I took my final vows this past winter.” 

Hiko’s head snapped up at that, regardless of the spike of pain it caused him. 

“Then I suppose it’s up to Kazushige to carry on the Niitsu name by himself,” he said bitterly. “That ought to please him.”

Everything changed. Why did everything have to change?

“I wish him every joy in that endeavor,” Kadenokoji - _Jiyu_ \- said with such perfect neutrality that Hiko couldn’t stifle a reflexive snort.

“Well, you clearly have no interest in it.” Hiko struggled up into a sitting position, trying to ignore the foul taste in his mouth. “Nor in carrying on any name, apparently.”

He was having difficulty fitting the idea of his brother willingly embracing a monastic existence into his head. Admittedly, there was little room inside his head for anything but the massive headache currently assaulting him, but _Jiyu_ hadn’t gone to the monastery willingly. So why had he chosen to not only remain there, but to actually buy into its ideology and lifestyle?

“It’s a good life for me here.” Jiyu spoke as if reading his mind. He poured two cups of tea from a fresh pot. “A meaningful life. And,” he hesitated a moment, “there’s nothing for me in Yoshino. That hasn’t been my home for a long time.”

“There’s nothing for anyone in Yoshino.” Hiko heard the bitterness in his own voice and decided he didn’t care. “For all Kazushige’s preening, he’s going to end up lording it over a few bu of mud and a handful of starving peasants on behalf of a daimyo who also lives in the mud.”

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry and the act of trying made him realize how awful the inside of his mouth tasted. “Where is my sake jug?”

In response, Jiyu merely nudged the tea tray toward him.

Hiko eyed the steaming cups of tea with distrust, but at least the flavor of the tea would be less objectionable than the current taste in his mouth. He picked up a cup, downed its contents at a gulp, and looked back at his brother.

“You could have gone anywhere,” he said pointedly. “I did.”

“You did,” Jiyu agreed. He picked up his own teacup, but instead of drinking from it, abruptly said, “Where is your shishou?”

_“This is the fate of the master when the apprentice is ready.”_

He’d been about to die. He’d seen death coming for him, seen the nine fanged mouths of the dragon gaping wide to swallow him...

_“The true final lesson of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.”_

He’d reacted out of instinct. Out of a sudden, desperate desire to take just one more breath, to feel the blood pump through his body from just one more beat of his heart. He’d reacted so quickly that he hadn’t even known what he’d done at first...

_“That your own life is worth everything…”_

His shishou was smiling. Why was he smiling? He was dying, so much blood soaking into the ground, his body nearly split in half, so why was he smiling?

_“...and nothing.”_

There was a loud clatter, and Hiko saw his teacup rolling across the floor. Somehow, he was on his feet. Somehow, his back was against the wall. Somehow, he was still alive.

“He’s dead.”

Jiyu looked him up and down, and for the first time, Hiko realized just how much blood and grime had soaked into his clothing. 

Carefully, Jiyu set his teacup down. Just as carefully, and without rising to his feet, he picked up Hiko’s cup and set it back on the tray. And then quietly he asked, “How?”

“I mastered the style,” Hiko heard himself say. His voice seemed to be coming from far away. “I didn’t know what that meant until now.”

For a long moment, Jiyu said nothing, and Hiko could almost see the truth sinking in.

Finally his brother said, “You’ve taken his name to honor him, then?”

“Every master takes the name Hiko Seijuro,” Hiko said somewhat dully. “For twelve generations, since the Sengoku era.” He gave a single humorless puff, a parody of a laugh. “Thirteen generations, now.”

Jiyu rose to his feet in one swift motion and stood at the threshold of the room, staring out at the purple-red sky. 

“And has every apprenticeship ended the same way?” He spoke with his back toward Hiko. 

“Apparently.” Hiko felt the wall slide against his back as he slumped into a sitting position.

A moment of silence passed between them, then Jiyu said, “Please remove your clothing and leave it on the engawa.” He didn’t turn around. “I’ll find you something more suitable.” 

He was gone a moment later.

The cloak, once so pristine and white, had been splattered with blood - _his shishou’s_ blood - and bore traces of mud and dust from his aimless wanderings over the past several days. Still, when he took it off, he folded it reverently and set it down gently on the wooden planks. 

Feeling its great weight leave his shoulders seemed almost wrong, somehow.

His leather bracers, his muddy hakama and short-sleeved gi, and his tabi all went into a much less orderly pile beside the cloak. His boots were still where he had left them. And then there was nothing left to occupy his mind.

He had killed his shishou.

The fact hammered incessantly at the anvil of his brain, ringing loudly and insistently so that he could not escape it. Every man who had taken the name Hiko Seijuro since the days of the Sengoku had killed his master to inherit the style. And every master had made the choice to take on an apprentice, knowing full well and from firsthand experience that such an apprenticeship would end in one of only two ways.

Had his own shishou ever taken on another apprentice? The man had been old, his hair flecked with threads of iron-gray despite his robust strength. Had there been others before him, others who had failed the final test?

Had his own shishou ever had second thoughts about his apprenticeship? Had he lain awake at night, thinking of the day when one of them would die? Had he gone insane at the end? Was that the source of his last enigmatic smile?

And did Hiko himself have any right to do any differently than his own shishou or any of the men who had preceded him? Could he himself refuse to take on an apprentice of his own when the time came? Would doing so be the greatest dishonor possible to the men who had given their lives willingly to perpetuate the most powerful style of kenjutsu ever known?

He closed his eyes, sagged back against the wall, and let his head fall forward into his hands.

_He desperately wanted a drink of sake…_

…  
…  
...

The suffocating summer humidity rolled onto the mountain, bringing with it screaming cicadas that could only be mollified by the slightly cooler evenings.

“Too hot,” Kenichi complained, ostensibly outside to help Hiko repair the rain barrel that served as their bathtub, but mostly sitting in the shade and chattering about everything and nothing. “Jiji, too hot.”

“That’s the summertime for you, bozu.” 

Hiko wiped sweat off of his forehead before it could trickle into his eyes and returned to the laborious process of scraping dried and cracked pine tar out of the joints of the barrel. He would save the application of new tar for the evening, since it would have to be heated over a low fire. 

“When I’m finished with the tub, I’ll take you to put your feet in the stream.”

“Too hot!” Kenichi insisted, and began struggling out of his yukata. He managed to yank one arm out of his sleeve before getting tripped up on his obi.

There was a reason Tomoe tied it so securely in the back, after all.

“What are you doing?” Hiko asked unnecessarily, reaching out to stop the boy from disrobing any further and stifling a chuckle as he did so. “You’re going to fall and hit your head.”

He turned the boy around and undid the very secure knot in his obi. “There. Now take it off.”

After all, what point was there in a two-year-old boy wearing clothes in the summertime on top of a mountain?

Without hesitation, Kenichi shrugged his yukata to the ground, kicked off his zori, and went running toward the stream.

“Don’t go in too deep, bozu,” Hiko called after him. He didn’t bother to hide the smile this time.

As he went back to scraping the tub, he wondered somewhat absently whether Tomoe had finished with the mizu manju she’d been making. Which put him in mind of the first time she’d made it, which brought him up short as he realized that it had been three summers ago.

Tomoe had been living there for three years. Enishi had been living there for two and a half. Kenichi had passed his second birthday not long ago.

“Frog!” Kenichi called. He stood barely toe-deep in the stream, cupping a small frog in both hands. “Jiji, look! Frog!”

He looked over at the boy, whose hair shone the color of polished copper in the summer sun, and thought (not for the first time) that his apprentice would have looked like this as a very young child. And (again, not for the first time) he found himself looking forward to the time when Kenshin would return for good.

“They’re dancing in the streets again.” Enishi staggered into view, yukata damp with sweat stains and skin glistening. Wisps of hair lay plastered to his forehead, though the rest of it stuck up in a tangle of moist shapes.

He dropped the carrying pole and the two buckets full of groceries into the dirt.

“We need to figure out how to grow rice,” he panted. “Because in the summer? This counts as torture.”

“Training,” Hiko corrected him as he flicked chips of dried pine tar from the edge of his knife. 

He turned to regard his second apprentice. Nearly two years of rigorous training had put some muscle on the boy’s lean frame. He was certainly unrecognizable as the ragged, emaciated urchin who had followed Kenshin and Tomoe up the mountain a couple of winters ago. 

“What are they singing about this time?” The door to the hut slid open. Tomoe, hair wrapped up in a kerchief, stood in the threshold, wiping her hands on a towel.

“The usual 'it’s all good, it’s all good’ stuff.” Enishi dragged his sleeve across his forehead. It didn’t seem to help. “Also, something about ‘Choshu, come storm the capital because goods will be cheaper then’.”

Tomoe frowned.

Hiko sighed and shook his head irritably. “People place an absurd premium on the least valuable of human commodities.”

“Kaachan!” Kenichi called, and Tomoe glanced over at her son. “Look! Frog-san!”

The frog managed to wriggle out of the boy’s hands and escape back into the stream. 

Kenichi sighed. “All gone Frog-san.”

Tomoe looked at Hiko. “He’s naked.”

Hiko looked back at her. “He’s two.”

“They were singing some pretty dirty stuff too,” Enishi mused. “I should’ve stuck around for more of it.”

Tomoe’s expression locked onto her brother’s, but all she said was, “Please bring in the groceries,” before disappearing back into the darkness of the hut. 

Enishi sighed dramatically, but he picked up the carrying pole and followed his sister into the house. 

Hiko chuckled before turning back to his work. The squabbling between the two siblings was generally amusing. Except for the times (usually during the winter) when it drove him out of the house in search of blessed silence, but a man couldn’t have everything.

“Kenichi peed!” the boy announced cheerfully.

“Did he now?” Hiko asked without looking up, a wry smile on his face. “Did Kenichi get any on himself?”

A quick bit of frantic splashing gave Hiko his answer, though the boy added, “All gone now.”

“What a great life.” Enishi came out of the house, chewing on a piece of watermelon that he must have picked up in the village. “Catching frogs and peeing naked in a stream on a hot summer day.”

Hiko snorted, peeling a long wedge of dried pine tar out of one of the joints of the tub. “You can go back to that life when you’re a very old man. Only the very young and the very old can get away with that.”

“So that’ll be you in a few years, huh?” Enishi spat a watermelon seed into the dirt. 

“I see you still can’t count properly,” Hiko grumbled. “I’ve told you, I’m thirty-two.”

“I know exactly how old you are.” Enishi ate the last few bites of watermelon and tossed the rind into the compost barrel before moving closer to Hiko. In a low voice, he said, “They were singing about him, too.”

Hiko set down his knife and turned to look at his apprentice properly. This was something he hadn’t expected at all.

“What were they saying about him?”

“Stay in the capital,” Enishi said. “Restore the Emperor.”

Hiko’s brow furrowed. “They wanted him to do that? Personally?”

“I mean, I didn’t stop and ask them. They were too busy dancing, but they used his name.” Enishi shrugged. “His hitokiri name, anyway.”

It occurred to Hiko suddenly just how far Enishi had come with regards to Kenshin. There had been a time, back when he’d first come to the mountain, when Enishi had spat out the word ‘Battousai’ as though it were the foulest insult. When he had avoided calling Kenshin by his real name. And now, he was offhandedly referring to ‘Battousai’ as Kenshin’s hitokiri name.

It was strange how things changed.

“At least they seem to be behind him,” Hiko said as he got to his feet. “I imagine they would find it something of a surprise, though, to learn that he lived up here for so long.”

A splash followed a high-pitched squeal. “Kenichi fell!” The boy giggled and kicked his legs in the water. “All wet now!”

Enishi rolled his eyes. “He so did that on purpose.”

Hiko chuckled. “You’d better pick him up before he decides to do it again.”

“Before he decides to give himself a mud bath, you mean.” Enishi reached into his yukata and pulled out a hastily-folded broadsheet, damp with sweat. He shoved it into Hiko’s hands before sauntering off to grab his nephew.

Hiko unfolded it to read the usual overblown nonsense. They still claimed that Kenshin was far larger and more fearsome-looking than he was, and that he was wanted for ‘Grievous and Despicable Treachery to the Shogun’. This time, though, there were two important differences: the reward for him had risen to a full ten ryo, and there was no longer any pretense at wanting him captured alive.

“Do they actually expect this to work?” he called out to Enishi, who was struggling with his wet and slippery nephew. “They can’t possibly expect anyone to be foolish enough to confront him for the reward, no matter how desperate they may be.” He shook his head. “Even some of the Shinsengumi run from him.”

“No!” Kenichi howled, when Enishi finally gave up and simply tucked his wriggling nephew under his arm and marched back over to Hiko. “No, Jichan!”

“I don’t know,” Enishi mused. “Ten ryo is a lot. I might confront him for the reward.”

“I want to play!” Kenichi flailed about to no avail. “Jichan, Kenichi want to play!”

The door to the hut slid open, and Tomoe took in the whole tableau without so much as an eyebrow twitch. “Lunch is ready. Kenichi, Kaachan made onigiri.”

Abruptly the boy stopped struggling. “I want to eat!” He tugged on Enishi’s sleeve. “Put Kenichi down. I want to eat!”

Enishi set him down and Kenichi took off toward the house without so much as a backward glance. His yukata remained abandoned in the dirt.

“Ten ryo, and you still consider him an apprentice.” Enishi snorted. “Imagine how the Shinsengumi, or even the Shogun, would react if they knew that?”

Hiko felt the contented pleasure he had been basking in just a moment ago evaporate like dew in the sun. 

Over the past months, he had found himself in greater and greater conflict about the future of Kenshin’s apprenticeship. Enishi’s as well, but Kenshin’s far more acutely. 

The notion of willingly permitting a situation to occur in which he was certain to die seemed horrific to him now in a way it never had before. His mind showed him nightmare images and scenarios - Kenshin staring down at his body with glazed eyes, his mind broken beyond repair; Tomoe struggling to hide Kenichi’s screaming face from the sight of his corpse; Enishi’s raw anger returning in full force; bitter recriminations from all directions, and the family shattered irreparably.

And yet he could not bring himself to end Kenshin’s apprenticeship definitively either. 

Doing so, he knew, would cause a rift to spring up between the two of them that would dwarf the one caused by their parting four years ago. No matter how much Kenshin might have harped on their supposed _mutual agreement to end things_ , Hiko knew that if things truly did end, Kenshin would be deeply hurt in a way that could not be repaired.

What, then, could he do? He couldn’t very well continue to stretch Kenshin’s apprenticeship out forever, could he? And then there was Enishi to consider as well…

“Shishou?” Enishi waved a hand in front of Hiko’s face. “You really took me seriously when I said ‘imagine’, huh?”

Hiko’s eyes snapped back into focus, and his face settled into a comfortably familiar glower. This, at least, he could handle. Better to take refuge in his customary acidity than to go any further down the road to despair.

“They wouldn’t be able to _imagine_ someone more skilled than Kenshin,” he snorted. “It’s hardly a surprise that they think he’s some kind of ogre, after all; their minds likely can’t grasp the concept of an ordinary man wielding such power.”

Enishi scowled. “Well, for someone who wields such power, this war sure is taking a long time. I thought it would be over by now.”

“I’d hoped it would,” Hiko sighed. “But I didn’t imagine it was likely. No one with as much authority as the Bakufu would concede it without a bitter and prolonged fight.”

Kenichi appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a fresh yukata and clutching his stuffed rabbit. He took a breath and shouted:

“Kaachan say come eat! No onigiri not come eat!”

“Well, then.” Hiko dusted his hands, beckoned to his apprentice, and gave his grandson a smile. “I suppose we’d better come eat then, hadn’t we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> So none of the historical stuff is embellished, because the Bakumatsu was just so goddamn crazy, I don't _need_ to embellish it. Yes, the Shogun died and was replaced by a new one. Yes, the Emperor died and was succeeded by a 14 year old who had never left the palace grounds. Yes, when the flags went up declaring victory for the Emperor at the battle of Toba-Fushimi, both sides had to stop fighting and discuss what the flags actually meant, because Okubo Toshimichi had literally sewn them himself as an arts n' crafts project and NO ONE KNEW WHAT THEY SYMBOLIZED. (Wait, we haven't gotten to Toba-Fushimi yet, lol, don't care, had to share it with y'all.)
> 
> *jazz hands* HISTORY!
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Okay, Enishi talking about people singing and dancing in the streets? Come on, you KNOW I didn't make that up either. That was the "Ee ja nai ka?" movement - which I chose to translate as Enishi saying "It's all good, it's all good," but can also mean "Ain't it grand?" (Remember Oibore in the manga, singing "Oh well, what the hell?" That's another translation of the movement.)
> 
> If you thought flash mobs were a recent and weird social movement, well, THEY WERE NOT. People started doing this during the Bakumatsu, between rioting in the streets, and also sang about all the other stuff Enishi mentioned, yes, including dirty songs. Becauuuuuse... *jazz hands* JAPANESE HISTORY!!!
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> So it always kind of bothered me that Hiko was supposed to be this SUPER CRITICAL IMPORTANT PERSON IN KENSHIN'S PAST, and yet... like.. Usui (you know, the blind ninja turtle looking guy) had more backstory. Enishi's boring as fuck comrades of the ridiculous Marvel Comics aesthetic had more backstory. SO I'VE GIVEN HIM SOME BACKSTORY AND A COUPLE OF BROTHERS, including a monk, because Hiko occasionally quotes random Buddhist sayings, so he got it from somewhere, so there. 
> 
> NOTE THE FOURTH  
> I owe a LOT of you responses. Like so many of you. But OMG have you LOOKED at the news going on in the US? It's a fucking circus right now, my friends, and I can't stop refreshing my feed. I love and treasure all your comments and will respond to you soon. In the meantime, continue blowing up my inbox with your fresh hot takes, because they are like good (non-virusy) air to me.


	21. Odyssey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then, suddenly, the brocaded banner of the Emperor appeared as if by magic at the top of the hill directly in front of him. Shouts of joy rang out all around him. 
> 
> It was over. 
> 
> Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HANDY DANDY GLOSSARY  
> Obousan : honorific for addressing a monk  
> Daimyo : feudal lords  
> Kiheitai : Ishin Shishi’s modern militia compromised of men from all social classes  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government   
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Tokaido : walking route connecting Tokyo to Kyoto  
> Genpuku : boy’s coming of age ceremony, occurring between the ages of 11-21  
> Daisho: long sword (katana) and short sword (wakizashi) paired together  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building

**Keiou 3-4  
(1867-1868)**

When the Shogun publicly announced the Emperor’s restoration in Kyoto, then refused to resign, Kenshin knew the war wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

What more would it take? 

The people rioted in the streets. Homes and businesses and even temples and shrines were burned to the ground, and still the Shogun refused to relinquish his chokehold on the country. 

How many more had to die?

The streets and the alleys ran scarlet with blood. The walls and gates were stained with it, the canals tinted a monstrous red. Kyoto drowned in death, and still the Shogun clung to his tattered shreds of power while both sides of the conflict marched atop a growing pile of corpses.

Why had it come to this?

“You ought to be much happier, Himura-san,” Shishio offered in a rare free moment. “You’re becoming increasingly indispensable.”

“Yes.” Kenshin stared into his untouched cup of sake. “I’ve dispensed of people very well.”

He had long since lost count. He had broken himself of the habit years ago. After those first six months of working as a hitokiri, when he realized the lives taken couldn’t be counted in the dozens anymore. 

When Iizuka - damn him - told him that his confirmed kills had reached one hundred, as if it had been something to take _pride_ in. Something to whisper about, to alternately admire and recoil from in the same heartbeat. 

He had been a very efficient hitokiri. Now he was just a very efficient killer in a never-ending war of attrition.

“Your reputation is growing faster than anyone’s in this war.” Shishio smiled his sharklike smile once more. “By the end, they’ll all remember your name more than Katsura ’s or Okubo-san’s.”

“I would hope not.” Kenshin forced himself to knock back the sake. “They’ve led us through this war. I’ve just been-”

“You’ve been lending them the strength they need to win it.” Shishio cut across him without hesitation. “You and I have the ability to turn a dream of victory into a reality.”

The sake tasted foul. Kenshin set it aside. 

Shishio’s eyes glinted redly. “We are the men who write history.” He tapped the hilts of his swords. “And these are our brushes.”

Was that all he would have to leave to his son then? 

Endless bloodshed. Countless dead. A pile of nameless, faceless corpses left in his wake, so many that he could never even begin to tally them. 

Was that all he would bring back to his wife? 

Stains that could never be washed away. Nightmares of violence and chaos. Rivers of blood that he had willingly, so very willingly, drowned himself for what had to be a just cause.

Would he have nothing else to give his family?

“I don’t want them to remember my name.” Kenshin frowned. “I want them to remember exactly how bad things were, so that they’ll cling to the new era when it comes.”

“No one but us will remember just how bad things were.” Shishio shook his head, an edge of scorn showing in his voice. “Because while the rest of them are waiting for the end of the war, we’re the ones on the front lines. We see what they cannot even imagine. If they cling to the new era, it won’t be due to memories of fighting the war.”

“They’ll remember the riots. They’ll remember the fires.” Kenshin could hear exhaustion dripping off his words, could feel the weariness down to his bones. “And they’ll remember the hunger.”

He was so tired. 

Their war of attrition seemed no closer to ending. He would go out tomorrow evening and he would kill, again and again and again, night after night, and still the war would drag endlessly onward.

He could put his swords down and walk away from all of it. His family would welcome him back with open arms. He could get to know his only son, hold his wife close to him, tend to his garden. Forget that the outside world existed at all.

But then what?

If he did that, every life he had taken would be for nothing. He would stand for nothing. He would be a man who had willingly stepped aside and let people suffer and die for nothing.

What kind of legacy would that be?

…  
…  
...

_It had been a long, sweaty, and irritating walk back to Mount Atago._

They had once again gone to visit his shishou’s monk friend at Asukaderaji, though why the visit had to be made right as the summer heat had turned sticky and muggy, Kenshin couldn’t say. And quite honestly, couldn’t be bothered to ask, because that would just turn into another stupid, pointless argument, and he wasn’t in the mood. 

The food at Asukaderaji, usually so abundant, had been different this time. Scarce and meager. Instead of the usual creative vegetarian fare, they had eaten millet porridge and pickles for both meals. 

They were pickling everything now, Kenshin had overhead Jiyu-obousan saying to Hiko, because the rice donations from the surrounding villages had dried up and they needed to stretch out the vegetables as long as possible. 

The daimyo had raised taxes again. The people were going hungry. More boys had apparently been left at the temple, because their parents couldn’t afford to feed or care for them.

By the time they reached the house on Mount Atago, Kenshin was soaked with sweat and streaked with dirt, and unless they wanted to eat nothing but more pickles and some rice for dinner, someone was going to have to fish.

“Someone’s going to have to fish,” said Hiko dryly, the look in his eyes conveying exactly who he thought that _someone_ was.

Kenshin glared at him sourly, but he grabbed the fishing basket all the same. “Put the rice on, at least. You can manage the rice.”

“Oh, can I?” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “I appreciate that assessment, especially considering how little you’re capable of managing.”

“I’m managing to actually go fishing, aren’t I?” Kenshin kept himself from actually stomping off toward the river, but it took a great deal of effort. Over his shoulder, he shouted, “And actually put the rice on!”

Fishing while angry and filthy wasn’t productive. 

Finally, he stripped off his dirty clothing, tossed it carelessly aside, and dunked himself in the river, letting the cool water wash away three days’ worth of sweat, grime, and frustration. 

If even the monks and the children they took care of were starting to go hungry, then it would be worse for the farmers and peasants. 

The daimyo were being needlessly greedy. There was no famine. There was no reason for them to hoard rice. They did it because they could, because the Shogun let them get away with it, and because no one had stepped up to stop them.

Well, almost no one.

Kenshin dried off quickly enough in the hot sun, pulled his sweat-damp clothing back on, and then unfolded the broadsheet he had carefully tucked inside his training gi. 

**‘JOIN THE KIHEITAI TODAY! CALLING ON MEN OF ALL SOCIAL CLASSES! IF YOU HAVE THE DISCIPLINE AND ABILITY, WE NEED YOU! _REVERE THE EMPEROR, EXPEL THE BARBARIANS!’_**

The sun was setting by the time he returned to the hut, hair still damp and two cleanly gutted fish in the basket.

“I said ‘go fishing’,” Hiko remarked as he turned away from the rice pot to look at him. “Not ‘pretend to be a fish’.”

Kenshin glowered at him. “I got the fish, didn’t I?” 

“It’s sunset,” Hiko shot back. “I thought you were hungry.”

“I am hungry,” Kenshin said slowly, with as much forced patience as he could muster, “and I have the fish.” 

He dug around for the skewers, made a show of skewering both fish, and miraculously grilled them without any further nitpicking from his shishou. And if they sat around the hearth, eating in tense silence, that was hardly Kenshin’s fault.

“You’re exceptionally sullen and irritable this evening,” Hiko finally said, spitting out the last of his fish bones. “More so than usual, I mean. I don’t suppose you’d care to explain the reason?”

“And you’re just the same as you always are.” Kenshin glared at him over his rice bowl. “Anyway, does it matter?”

“It does if I want to have a peaceful night’s sleep.” Hiko glowered. “Which I do. I don’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night when you go outside to train in some fit of pique.”

“A fit of-” 

Kenshin bit down on his tongue, abruptly grabbed the dinner dishes, and stood up. He paused only to step into his zori before dumping the dishes, fish bones and all, into the washing bucket. 

“I’ll try not to let my _pique_ wake you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Shishou.”

“Good.” Hiko’s face was stony. “Then as soon as you explain the source of your current tetchiness, we can have an untroubled evening.” He gestured as if inviting Kenshin to put on a performance. “Go on, then.”

Kenshin glared at him for a long moment, and then the words spilled out of him in a rush. 

“Didn’t it bother you? What’s going on at Asukaderaji? Didn’t any of it bother you? Because you really don’t seem even slightly bothered by the whole thing.”

“This world is full of suffering.” Hiko returned Kenshin’s glare with hard, unblinking eyes. “You, of all people, know that.”

“Yes,” Kenshin snapped. “Yes, I do know that. Which is why watching the same thing happen to other people, to _monks_ and _children_ , bothers me.” He took a breath and rushed on. “They don’t _have_ to be suffering right now. There’s no famine, there’s no disease. This is all manmade suffering. People are _causing_ this on purpose.”

He put a hand on the washing bucket to steady himself. Took another deep breath.

“They’re causing it because they’re greedy and because they can, and yes, it bothers me, and it should bother you too!”

“This again?” Hiko’s voice turned unpleasantly sour, as did the look in his eyes. “You never tire of hearing yourself talk about the same things over and over again, do you?”

Kenshin clenched the rim of the washing bucket so tightly, his knuckles cracked. He picked the damn thing up and wrenched the door open with his foot. 

“Sorry to bore you with the suffering of the world, Shishou. I’ll just take it all with me while I wash the dishes then.”

“And do what with it, exactly?” Hiko’s raised voice seemed to pummel his ears. “Dwell on it until you bring this up again? Or let it distract you from the only thing that should be occupying your mind right now?”

“At least I give a damn about everything going on around me,” Kenshin nearly shouted. “Which is more than I could ever say about you.”

He whirled around and took the stupid washing bucket with him to the stream by the side of the house, nearly throwing the damn bucket on the ground at his feet. For a brief moment, he considered kicking the whole thing into the stream, but he would only have to pick it all up again and he’d probably end up having to search for the chopsticks besides.

Damn it.

He blew out an angry, shaking breath, crouched down, and grabbed one of the rice bowls, only to realize he had forgotten the dishrag inside the house.

_Damn it._

After a moment of deciding that he didn’t want to wash away oily fish residue with his bare hands, he stalked back toward the house only for Hiko to appear in the doorway. 

“That’s clearly not an apology I see in your face.” He folded his arms. “Did you think of something pithy to say as a parting shot after you’d walked out of the house?”

Kenshin glowered up at him. “Like you’d even recognize an apology if you heard one.”

“As I’ve never heard one from you, I doubt that theory will ever be tested.” Hiko glared down at Kenshin. “And you can’t possibly have finished the washing-up yet.”

“I need a dishrag,” Kenshin said through gritted teeth, moving past Hiko and snatching a rag off the kitchen shelf. 

He finished the washing-up and returned to the house. He lit the fire for the bath. He laid out both futon side-by-side, took a bath when it was his turn, and put himself to bed with a civil enough “Good night,” that he managed not to say through gritted teeth.

_Damn it..._

…  
…  
...

The chill wind whipped past, flakes of snow fluttering madly and obscuring the view. Snow crunched under straw zori and leather boots. Banners flapped erratically, colors jarring amidst the featureless white.

The vanguard of the Bakufu had been heavily armed with rifles, yet not a single shot had been fired before they were cut down by the Satsuma forces. A few confused shouts drifted across the snow as the Ishin Shishi soldiers who picked up the rifles exclaimed that they hadn’t been loaded.

The battle of Toba-Fushimi was bizarre: swords and spears clashed with bayonets and sabers, the deafening booms of Western cannons and the sharp cracks of Western rifles split the air, dense white smoke drifted through the air with the snow, and the screams of the wounded and dying seemed to drown out everything else.

Blood flew from Kenshin’s sword as he moved like a whirlwind through every Bakufu soldier in his path. The captains of the Shinsengumi drifted across his path like ghosts, vanishing before their blades could touch his. Or perhaps he simply imagined them in the midst of so many others.

Time spiraled out of all recognition. The battle might have raged for days, or perhaps only for a matter of hours. His arms felt leaden, as though he were seven years old once more and exhausted from swinging a bokutou into the trunk of a tree all day. He could not have counted the dead even if he had wished to.

And then, suddenly, the brocaded banner of the Emperor appeared as if by magic at the top of the hill directly in front of him. Shouts of joy rang out all around him. 

It was over. 

Finally.

“It’s not over,” Katsura said heavily a few hours later, seated on the ground in his tent as Kenshin stood across from him. 

Outside, the battle long over, the Ishin Shishi troops were tending to the cleanup - looking for survivors, tending to the wounded, and preparing the dead for the pyres. By all rights, Kenshin should have been walking home right then.

“The Bakufu forces are fleeing northward as we speak.” Katsura looked exhausted. Old. “They’re going to make a last stand with the northern domains. The end is in sight, but we haven’t won yet.”

His family was so close. A day’s walk away, and just within his reach. 

Katsura looked up at Kenshin, his face prematurely lined but his eyes still as bright with revolutionary fervor as Kenshin had ever seen them. “I need you to go north with us, Himura. This victory has to be decisive. A final show of strength, to leave no doubt as to whose hands will guide the future of this country.”

“They won’t be my hands,” Kenshin said quietly, and he could hear bone-deep weariness in his own voice. His gaze fell to the ground. “When this is finished… when all of this is finished…”

Then he would put his swords down. 

Finally. 

“But it isn’t finished yet, Himura.” Katsura’s voice was soft, but insistent. “And we need you to see this through to the end.” He sighed heavily. “Your successor didn’t make it through the battle.”

Kenshin’s head snapped up at that, eyes widening. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Himura.” Katsura shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask this of you if I had a choice. After the war is won, you’ll be able to go back to your family and live in whatever way pleases you, but I have to ask you to stay.” He inclined his head. “Please.”

So close.

As the winter gave way to spring, the war made bloody tracks through the northeast. Yokohama was engulfed in violence, but the Shogun’s own castle in Edo fell to the Ishin Shishi - now Imperialist - forces without a single life lost. 

Aizu and the other northern domains declared that they would all fight and die before recognizing the new government, but a series of increasingly traumatic battles and a steadily rising number of dead forced their surrender. 

In the northernmost island of Hokkaido, in an oddly bucolic port city called Hakodate, the Bakufu finally collapsed in on itself in one last, decisive battle. 

In the warm spring of the fifth month of the founding year of Meiji, the Bakufu finally surrendered. 

It was over. 

…  
…  
...

_The argument started up again almost immediately the next day._

Breakfast turned into a shouting match. Despite the clear blue skies and morning humidity that had yet to turn oppressive, any pretense of training was immediately abandoned the moment they stepped outside and continued to yell at each other. 

They attempted to break for lunch and at least finish their ochazuke around the hearth in tense silence, but people were dying. People were starving and suffering, and his shishou didn’t care.

He didn’t care about anything. 

“People are always dying.” Hiko slammed down his bowl, somehow managing not to crack it. “People will always suffer. Children will always starve. Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu cannot change what the world is, or what people are. Haven’t you paid attention to a single thing I’ve taught you?”

Kenshin surged to his feet. “If that’s the way you feel, then everything you’ve taught me has been for _nothing_!”

Hiko’s nostrils flared. “And which of us is the master? Which of us has lived in this world longer? Which of us has actually used Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?”

“Well, you don’t use Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu for anything!” Kenshin shot back. “You just want to sit here on top of a mountain, ignoring everyone that’s crying out for help because you don’t even want to try. What’s the point of being a master if you don’t do anything with it?”

“I saved your life with it,” Hiko growled. “For all the gratitude I’ve gotten. And what exactly were you hoping to do with it?” He snorted. “Since you’ve clearly put a great deal of thought into this.”

The Kiheitai broadsheet was burning a hole in his training gi, and Kenshin had the sudden urge to whip the sheet out and shove it in his shishou’s face. Instead, he said:

“We could save more lives with it. We could do so much more than just hide away from the world while people are suffering around us.” He took a breath. “We could actually help. We could help put a stop to things.”

“So you’ve said,” Hiko retorted maddeningly. “And I’ve told you that until you finish your training, you won’t be able to do any of those things.”

Kenshin clenched his hands so tightly, his nails bit into his palms. “So it’s not even worth trying? It’s not worth trying to do anything?”

“I sometimes wonder whether you even listen when I speak,” Hiko spat. “You want to put a stop to the suffering you see, but you can’t seem to understand that it’s simply the result of human nature. As long as there are men, there will always be evil. You want to end the suffering?” He shook his head grimly. “Every last person in the world will have to die.”

“That’s just an excuse!” Kenshin just barely kept himself from screaming the words. “That’s just an excuse to not care about anybody and not do anything!”

“And yet you have a plan to do exactly what needs to be done, don’t you?” He could actually hear the eye-roll in Hiko’s voice. “You’re going to succeed where countless warlords, emperors, holy men, and political strategists have failed for centuries.”

“Fine.”

Kenshin stared at Hiko as if seeing him for the first time, and very suddenly, he couldn’t stand what he saw. 

“You don’t care about what’s going on outside of this mountain?” He stepped into the kitchen space, stopping only to jam his feet into his zori, and slid the door open so roughly that it nearly banged shut again.“Then I don’t care about this damn apprenticeship anymore. I’m leaving.”

It would probably take him at least a fortnight to walk all the way to the capital of the Choshu domain, but it was better than staying on Mount Atago for one more day. 

“Leaving?” Hiko’s voice sounded almost lazily amused. “And where do you imagine you’ll go? Will you walk back to Asukaderaji and spend the rest of your days peeling vegetables with Jiyu?” He snorted. “A wonderful way to save the world from itself.”

“Choshu,” Kenshin said through gritted teeth, then stepped out of the house without looking back.

He made it exactly two steps away from the door before Hiko’s voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

“You are not going to Choshu.” Hot anger radiated off of his shishou as though he were aflame. “Have you lost what passes for your mind? Or are you simply more of an idiot than I ever gave you credit for being?”

“Don’t concern yourself with it.” Kenshin didn’t look back. “You don’t give a damn about anything anyway.”

“Oh, don’t I?” Kenshin kept walking, but Hiko’s hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him around. His shishou’s eyes were narrowed in real anger. 

“You don’t understand a single thing I’ve tried to teach you,” Hiko spat. “A Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman has no business fighting in a war. And warlords and generals have no business telling a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman who will fall under his blade.”

“Because it’s somehow better for a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman to just remove himself from the world while people are suffering and dying?” Kenshin shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I’ll never believe that.”

He turned once again to go.

Hiko’s hand yanked him back around again, his enraged face glaring down into Kenshin’s.

“Do you know what will happen if you go down there to fight in the war these people are planning?” Hiko bellowed. “Did you ever stop to consider why no Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman in thirteen generations has been involved in the wars of lesser men?”

He didn’t wait for Kenshin to answer, instead plowing on ahead while maintaining his grip on a fistful of Kenshin’s gi. 

“Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is invincible. It is so powerful, so overwhelmingly undefeatable, that it can single-handedly tip the balance of any battle. You were too young to remember the Black Ships, but I wasn’t. One of those ships could have sunk the entirety of the Shogun’s navy and bombarded Edo until only dust remained, and it wouldn’t have suffered so much as a scratch in return. That is the power of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, do you understand?”

Kenshin wrenched himself out of Hiko’s grasp and stumbled back a few steps.

“Maybe that’s what people need then,” he said breathlessly. “If it’s so overwhelmingly undefeatable, then maybe I can actually save people from all of this.”

“How?” Hiko growled. “By choosing a side and hoping to all the gods it’s the right one? Because make no mistake, whichever side you ally yourself with will be the winning one. And that means that every single mistake they make, every power-hungry political maneuver, every tax they levy and every execution they order once they’ve seized power will be on your head.”

He glared stonily down at Kenshin. “Do you think you’ll be able to live with yourself after that?”

Kenshin looked up at him for a long moment.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “If it means no one starves to death when there’s no famine... If it means no one goes to bed with nothing but warm water in their stomachs… then yes.”

Hiko looked disdainfully down at Kenshin for a long moment, then snorted once more.

“Fine.” His eyes had hardened, and his voice sounded deeply sour. “It’s pointless to try to convince you. You’ll believe whatever you want to, and you insist on learning the hard way. So go.”

He gestured towards the path leading away from the house and down the mountain. “Go down there and fight, if that’s the kind of waste you want to make of your life. But once you leave here, don’t even think about coming back.”

He turned his back on Kenshin.

For a brief, terrifying moment, Kenshin felt the ground drop out from under him. It would be easy enough, he realized wildly, to take it all back, burn the broadsheet in his gi, and refocus his mind on his training. 

Easy enough… but at what cost?

He took a deep breath, and once he was certain he could speak calmly said:

“I understand.” He bowed, even though his shishou - _former_ shishou now, he supposed - couldn’t see it. “Thank you.”

_He reached the capital of the Choshu domain in twelve days..._

…  
…  
...

While the rest of his comrades celebrated their hard won victory well into the night, Kenshin slipped away from the camp. 

One of the Imperial ironclads (and he still couldn’t wrap his head around that part. They were Imperialists now; they had _won_ ) would be leaving for the mainland within a few days, and of course he’d be more than welcome to hitch a ride, but the sooner - and more quietly - he could get away, the better. 

He wandered through the docks of Hakodate, not entirely sure what he was looking for, when a friendly, heavily-accented voice called out:

“You need a boat so late at night, Ishin Shishi soldier?”

The voice belonged to a man clad in the colorful robe and patterned headscarf of the native Ainu people. He sat on a dock post, chewing on what appeared to be a strip of dried meat. 

Kenshin turned and regarded the man, taking in his clothing, his bushy beard, and his wild tangle of hair.

Red hair like his own. Like his son’s.

“I might,” he said cautiously.

The man grinned and gestured to a small, covered ferry boat floating on one side of the dock. “If you have the coin, Harukor is your man. I can bring you to Oma in six hours.” He cocked his head to one side. “Maybe if you sleep, it feels like only one hour.”

A small smile flitted across Kenshin’s mouth. “All right.”

“Resunotek!” Harukor slapped his hand lightly against the roof of the ferry boat, and a bleary-eyed woman, mouth marked with the distinctive tattoos of the Ainu women, poked her head out of the side. “We have a guest.”

The inside of the boat was small, but clean. Resunotek, whose arms were covered in elaborate, swirling tattoos and whose belly was heavy with child, served him tea and some sort of fried, starchy cake that Kenshin couldn’t name and had never tasted before.

“ _Penekoshoi-imo_ ,” Resunotek said, and he didn’t know if that was the name of the cake, an invitation to eat, or something else entirely.

A very small child, perhaps no older than two summers, slept on the floor of the boat, wrapped in blankets. Her hair was the same burnished copper color.

Several hours into the voyage, with Resunotek curled up asleep next to her child, Harukor ducked into the cabin and grabbed one of the starchy cakes.

“You have hair like many of us, Ishin Shishi soldier.” He reached out and gently fingered the edges of Kenshin’s ponytail. “But you are not one of us.” He smiled. “Maybe you are Poiyaunpe.”

Kenshin sipped on a fresh cup of tea. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

“One of our great warriors from one of our great stories.” Harukor’s smile widened. “Poiyaunpe was raised in Japan, but learns he is Ainu and so returns to fight for his people.” He regarded Kenshin for a moment. “But you are going the other way, soldier. I think you have a family you are returning to.”

Kenshin quirked an eyebrow at that. “How can you tell?”

Harukor’s smile turned into a grin. “Why else would you have paid me to take you to Oma, instead of simply waiting three days for one of your own ships to take you for free?” He polished off the starchy cake. “You are a man who is eager to be home with his family and cannot wait even one more day.”

That much was true, but there was a stop Kenshin had to make first. 

…

A merchant with a large wagon full of expensive silks and a desire not to be robbed or murdered on the road saved Kenshin nearly a fortnight of walking to Edo. (Which had apparently been renamed Tokyo a handful of months back.)

“You know you could make a lot of money protecting merchants on these roads,” the merchant told him once they reached _Tokyo_ and Kenshin refused the man’s repeated attempts to pay him. “Something to think about.”

Kenshin found the gate marking the red light district of Yoshiwara with only a little help from a few smirking passersby. 

“It’s not even the hour of the horse,” a man sweeping the front of a shop snorted, gesturing to the cloudless blue sky. “Some young men can’t wait for anything.”

Yoshiwara in broad daylight still bustled with activity, but largely of the shopping and errand-running variety. He asked around at a few different teahouses, was eventually directed to the correct brothel - the Hanakotoba - and rapped at the front door until someone finally opened it.

A kamuro girl, no older than ten, looked up at him and giggled. “We’re closed, Oniisan. Come back this evening.”

Kenshin sighed. “I’m here to see Hanahomura-dono.”

Another giggle. “It’s not even the hour of the horse. Hanahomura-dono is _sleeping_.”

The heavy weight of exhaustion, of the war, of _everything_ came crashing down on Kenshin all at once. For the briefest of moments, he considered simply moving the girl aside, but instead he slipped a coin into her hand.

“Please tell Hanahomura-dono that Himura Kenshin is here to see her.”

The girl disappeared inside the brothel, sliding the door shut behind her. Just when Kenshin was about to start tapping on it again, the door opened and the girl beamed up at him. 

“Please come upstairs, Himura-san. Hanahomura-dono will see you now.”

Yumi sat on a cushion just inside the room. She wore a simple, yet clearly expensive kimono of blue silk, her face was unpainted, and her hair was gathered atop her head in a hasty knot. She looked much younger without her elaborate wig and makeup, and her eyes were filled with what seemed to be mingled pleasure and concern.

“I’m pleased to see you, Himura-san,” she said, gesturing for him to sit down on a second cushion. A pair of tray tables sat beside her, with food for the both of them laid out in several small bowls. “Surprised, but pleased. You’ll join me for breakfast, won’t you?”

Kenshin eased his sword out of his belt and knelt down on the cushion. The breakfast that had been put together was impressive: salmon, miso soup, natto soybeans, along with pickles, rice, and tea. He meant to say thank you or express his appreciation. What came out was:

“I am so tired.”

Yumi’s eyes clouded with concern. “I’m sure you must be. I can’t imagine how long it’s been since the war allowed you to have a decent night’s sleep.”

Kenshin tried to find an answer for that, and when nothing came to him, said, “I went all the way up to Hokkaido. One of the Shogun’s supporters tried to…” He shook his head in exhausted disbelief. “He tried to form his own republic. In Hokkaido. With a warship.”

A humorless huff of laughter escaped him. “But it’s over now.”

Yumi looked as though she were about to say something, but the sudden light vanished from her eyes as quickly as it had appeared. She lifted a piece of salmon to her mouth instead. “You should eat, Himura-san.”

Kenshin nodded, lifted the chopsticks, and wordlessly ate a few bites of the salmon and the natto soybeans. 

He became aware after a few silent minutes that Yumi was looking at him with hesitant expectation in her eyes. Her hands twisted in her lap, her own food left untouched after that first bite. And finally, haltingly, she whispered what must have been on her mind from the beginning.

“He didn’t make it, did he?”

Kenshin looked at her for a long moment, then set his chopsticks down on the tray. 

“No,” he said quietly. “He didn’t.” 

Yumi’s face crumpled, her gaze falling into her lap. 

“He fell at Toba-Fushimi. I wasn’t there to see it, but…” Kenshin took a breath. Shook his head. “I am so sorry.”

Yumi drew in one long, shaking breath, her face turned downward toward her own knees. A single dark spot appeared on her left knee with a gentle tap. 

“I hadn’t heard from him in months,” she whispered raggedly. “I think… I think I knew, somehow.”

“I wanted to tell you sooner…” Kenshin started, but trailed away. Nothing he could possibly say would make it better or easier for her. 

So many dead. 

Another soft tap. Another tiny spot of darker blue on the knee of Yumi’s beautiful blue kimono.

“You did more than most other men could have done.” Her voice shook along with her shoulders. “More than many would have bothered to do.”

“Maybe,” he murmured. “I hope so.” 

Time would tell.

For a long moment, the two of them sat there quietly, lost in their own private thoughts or grief, until Yumi drew another deep, shuddering breath which seemed to cleanse her.

“At least you made it back.” She raised her head, her eyes red and tears still clinging to her lashes, but a sad smile on her face nonetheless. “Your wife and son will be overjoyed to welcome you home.”

His face warmed at the thought of them. Kenichi would have just had his third birthday. It was possible he was speaking in full sentences now. And Tomoe…

He missed everything about his wife.

Best not to dwell there though, when Yumi was suffering her own personal loss. Best to be on his way and give her the space and privacy to grieve.

“Once I get home, I want to put down my swords for good.” Exhaustion vied with longing in his tone. “And show my son how to live in what will hopefully be a more peaceful world.”

“I know,” Yumi said, her voice hitching. That melancholy smile still lingered and her eyes still glistened with unshed tears. “I only wish that such peace could have come without so much war.” 

She reached out and gently - ever so gently - brushed her soft hand against Kenshin’s scarred cheek. “For all our sakes.”

The touch of her hand somehow reminded Kenshin how utterly drained and exhausted he was, and he felt himself sag with the effort of holding himself upright. Yumi’s eyes filled with concern once more.

“It’s not even the hour of the horse,” she said. “Both you and I are ordinarily asleep at this time of day.”

She rose gracefully to her feet and moved to the futon closet. In a few moments she had unfolded her futon and positioned it in the corner of the room.

“Come,” she said, and Kenshin heard a strong hint of exhaustion in her voice as well. “Come and rest, Himura-san. We both need it very badly.”

Kenshin knew that he was supposed to pick up his sword, apologize for the intrusion, and then be on his way. But with one glance at the futon, the refusal died on his lips. 

It had been so long since he had slept in a futon. It had been so long since it felt safe to do so. 

Wordlessly he set both of his swords next to the futon and stretched himself out atop the blanket. And then, incredibly, he felt Yumi settle down behind him. Her arm curled itself tentatively about his waist, her body curled around his, and her forehead came to rest against the base of his neck.

It would be impossible to fall asleep like that…

“Himura-san, it’s time to wake up,” Yumi said, voice gentle but insistent. “I have to get ready for work now.”

Kenshin sat up abruptly, awake but disoriented. Yumi knelt next to the futon, hands in her lap. Mid-afternoon sun striped confusingly across the tatami mats. 

He frowned. “It’s the hour of…?”

“The monkey.” Yumi gestured toward the tray tables. “I’ve had lunch brought up. You’ll join me for a quick meal before I have to get ready, won’t you?”

A quick meal turned out to be even more of an impressive spread than breakfast had been, but Kenshin bolted down the food - as did Yumi - conscious of how little time they had. But once the trays had been cleared away and Kenshin was ready to take his leave, Yumi abruptly said:

“You’ll take a bath before you go, won’t you? When was the last time you had a bath?”

When Kenshin didn’t have a response for that, Yumi’s expression turned coy. 

“You certainly don’t want to reunite with your wife without having bathed, Himura-san.”

That was a fair point. Kenshin agreed to the bath, but right before one of Yumi’s kamuro girls led him away, he said:

“My wife’s father lives in Edo. As soon as it’s safe to travel, we’ll come.” He gave her a small smile. “And if it isn’t too much of an imposition, Yumi-dono, we’ll come visit you as well.”

The smile on Yumi’s face melted from coyness into genuine sincerity.

“You could never be an imposition, Himura-san.” She gave a soft laugh. “Not after eating my food, sleeping in my futon, and washing in my bath.”

The kamuro girl giggled behind her sleeve.

“Thank you, Yumi-dono.” Kenshin bowed, and Yumi returned the gesture. “My family and I will see you again soon.”

He had one more stop to make before home.

…

With no merchant looking for protection, it took Kenshin a week’s walk on the battle-scarred Tokaido to reach Kyoto.

Under the midday sun, Kyoto looked very different than the blood-drenched midnight city Kenshin had grown accustomed to. That the war had dragged on for years was evident in every scorched fence and stained cobblestone, but the people themselves seemed determined to remake the city into one they could again claim as their own.

And yet, the place felt haunted.

He could see the dead on every street. Hear dying screams in every alley. The high-ringing clash of steel, the boom of cannon fire, echoed maddeningly in his ears.

Perhaps he would always loathe the place.

He just wanted this final errand to be done with so that he could go home.

The forge was on the outskirts of Kyoto, just as it had been when Kenshin had come there for his genpuku sword at twelve, and again for his wakizashi at fourteen. He had needed daisho to be an effective hitokiri. Now he wanted nothing more than to put his swords down.

Arai Shakku sat on the engawa, smoking a long-stemmed kiseru pipe and occasionally nursing a cup of tea. At Kenshin’s approach, he gave a short, barking laugh that expelled twin streams of smoke from his nostrils.

“I should have known I’d see you again, Himura Battousai.” His voice was rough from a lifetime of breathing in the smoke of his forge. He gestured with the stem of his pipe at the daisho still in Kenshin’s belt. “My work and your work hand in hand, laying a foundation of corpses on which to build the grand new era.” 

Kenshin felt the ground shift under his feet. He had never given the man his hitokiri name, and the ramification of being recognized by anyone outside of the war slammed into him like a tsunami.

As though reading his mind, Shakku gave another coarse laugh. “Don’t look so astonished. How many red-haired master swordsmen are there in this country? And how many did I craft swords for?”

“I’m not…” Kenshin shook his head, still unmoored. “I’m not a master.”

Shakku looked at Kenshin with eyes as hard and sharp as the edges of his blades. Then, all of a sudden, those edges dulled.

“That makes two of us,” the smith muttered, picking up his teacup once more. “For all the artistry and craftsmanship of swordsmithing, for all the grace and beauty of swordsmanship, all we two have managed to create in the end have been corpses.”

“Yes,” Kenshin acknowledged, though he hoped to all the gods that it had been worth it. That he had helped to bring about a world worthy of his son. Worthy of his parents, who had died needlessly so long ago, and worthy of Akane-san, Kasumi-san, and Sakura-san, whose lives had been horrifically brutal and short.

Worthy of everyone he had killed to bring about this new era. 

“But it’s time for me to put down my swords,” he continued. “I never want to do this again.” He hesitated a moment, then said the words aloud. Saying them aloud would make it so. “I never want to kill again.”

He removed his daisho and set them down on the engawa in front of Shakku.

“I’d like to give these back to you.”

Shakku stared down at the swords for a long moment, a thin trail of smoke curling from the forgotten pipe in his hand.

“How will you live?” the smith finally asked him, looking up with hard eyes once more. “A swordless swordsman won’t survive for long, peacetime or no peacetime.”

If Kenshin were honest with himself, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He had thought only of putting his swords down and returning to his family. 

Best to be honest with Shakku then.

“They don’t need me anymore,” he said quietly. “And even if they want me, I wouldn’t be of any use to them. All I could do is tear one government down. I lack the skill to build one up.”

“And the skill to protect your own life?” Shakku gazed at him shrewdly. “The lives of others? Can you do that with a vow never to kill? With empty hands? Or will you leave that in the hands of others as well?”

Kenshin’s shoulders slumped. He was so tired. “I have to try.” 

Shakku’s piercing gaze held him for ten beats of his heart, the swordsmith saying nothing. Then, suddenly, Shakku rose to his feet.

“Wait there,” he called back over his shoulder, disappearing inside the building.

When Shakku returned, he was carrying a katana with simple mountings. A strange smile played about his face, and his eyes held an odd light.

“Here.” He tossed the sword to Kenshin, who caught it easily. It felt oddly heavy, and Kenshin realized its sheath was made of steel rather than wood. 

“The means to test your vow.” Shakku’s smile suggested some sort of private joke. “Use that and you’ll see what such a promise is really worth.”

Kenshin drew the sword partially out of its sheath and stared at the blade for a very long moment, before abruptly resheathing it with a ringing snap.

He looked at Shakku and nodded. “All right. Thank you.”

Shakku nodded in return, his expression softening as he knelt to pick up Kenshin’s daisho gently and somewhat reverently. “Perhaps I’ll let these follow your vow as well.” That strange smile still danced across his face. “I think I’ll melt them down. Reforge them into something else. Something that will never take another life.”

“I’ll return one day and see what you’ve created,” Kenshin promised.

“Perhaps.” Shakku looked at him appraisingly. “But I’d better get busy creating it first. And you look as though you have places to go as well.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Kenshin bowed low and reverential. “For everything.”

…

The last of the journey took a day and a half under the hot summer sun and the cloudless night sky. 

He didn’t stop to eat or sleep. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other with single-minded purpose. So close. 

He was so close.

The foot of Mount Atago loomed large, yet oddly welcoming. He sucked in his breath and prepared to make the trip up, the same hike he had made hundreds of times as a child. He could do it with his eyes closed if he needed to.

So close.

He trudged up the mountain, one foot after the other, in what felt like the longest walk of his life. And then finally - _finally!_ \- he half-staggered into the clearing, the familiar hut coming into view.

Enishi, tall and willowy at just thirteen years of age, sighted him first, his face splitting into a wide grin.

“Hey,” he shouted, slinging his bokutou over his shoulder. “Kenshin’s back!”

The unmistakable figure of Hiko appeared from around the side of the house, his face an expression of disbelief mingled with relief. He gave a single bark of loud laughter. “You certainly took your time getting here.”

A waist-high, red-haired little Kenichi came running around from the garden, stopping beside Hiko and looking Kenshin’s way with round and curious eyes. 

“Touchan?” he said cautiously.

“Kenshin?”

Tomoe materialized in the doorway, her eyes shining and her face oddly contorted. Wordlessly, she held out her arms to him.

Kenshin moved forward, nearly stumbling into Tomoe’s arms, pulling her tightly against him and burying his face in her neck.

“You’re home,” she breathed, her arms winding around him with surprising strength and her voice ragged with emotion. “You’re home.”

“I’m home,” he murmured, breathing in the scent of her, reveling in the warm feel of her in his arms. 

Finally. 

**End of Atago Arc**   
**Next up: Edo Arc!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Man, I have NOTES today. First, let's get all the history stuff out of the way, because there's a lot. (And that's what you're here for in the notes, right? Right?)
> 
> "REVERE THE EMPEROR, EXPEL THE BARBARIANS!" also known as SONNO JOI! The originally rallying cry of the Ishin Shishi. They didn't stick with the expelling part so much (or, uh, at all), but they needed a sweet rallying cry to rouse the masses, and that's what they came up with. 
> 
> The EMPTY RIFLES carried by some of the Bakufu forces at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi? Historians say this suggests that some (not all) of the Bakufu forces weren't totally serious about the battle and didn't think the Ishin Shishi forces would be serious about it either. (Spoiler alert: they were.)
> 
> "You were too young to remember the BLACK SHIPS..." Hoo boy. In short, in 1853 four modern US Naval warships steamed into Edo bay and threatened to attack if Japan did not open its borders and begin trading with the Western powers. This is a very long story, kids, but basically this sparked the entire conflict. It was also extremely psychologically traumatizing for the Japanese, because it pretty single-handedly destroyed the narrative of how powerful they were and also revealed how easily the Western powers could colonize them if they chose to do so.
> 
> So yes, Hiko is being a DRAMATIC BITCH when he compares the POWER of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu to the Black Ships. 
> 
> AINU PEOPLE: the indigenous people of the northernmost island of Hokkaido, and yes, some of them do have RED HAIR! (Perhaps because of intermarriage with Russians? Perhaps because they're just awesome? Nobody knows.) I did my best to portray indigenous Ainu culture properly. The PENEKOSHOI-IMO that Resunotek fed Kenshin was a fried potato cake, which the Ainu had been eating for centuries, due to trade with Russians, but potatoes hadn't made their way down to mainland Japan yet. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> This is a lot of notes. Wow. So much notes. 
> 
> Anyway, in the original, Kenshin fucks off after the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, but the war didn't actually end until the final holdouts of the Bakufu surrendered in Hokkaido. Oh, and by the way, that final battle was bananas. A Bakufu supporter KIDNAPPED some foreign diplomats (I believe French and British), STOLE a warship, and escaped to Hokkaido, where he promptly declared that Hokkaido was its own country and everyone else could go screw. *jazz hands* JAPANESE HISTORY!
> 
> So yeah, in this version, Kenshin follows the war all the way to the end, mostly because I wanted him to interact with some Ainu people. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Have some omake. This is what I wrote when I was struggling with part of the chapter.
> 
> Something something no one actually died at Toba-Fushimi. (Which was Keiou 4, or January 1868 for those who like normal calendars.)
> 
> “The fuck?” Kenshin muttered over the cannon fire, probably. “This is a four day battle.”
> 
> “Hey, sempai.” Shishio pulled out his well-crafted but extremely fucked up sword. “Check this out. Sweet, huh?”
> 
> But then he died before Kenshin could answer him. Only Kenshin was on a different part of the battlefield, so he didn’t see the “death.”
> 
> “Yeah, he died,” Katsura-san said. “It’s really sad, but he’s dead.”
> 
> “How?” Kenshin asked.
> 
> “He… like… shot himself 27 times and caught fire,” Katsura-san explained. “Anyway, could you not fuck off yet and actually go up to Hokkaido and finish this war out?”
> 
> NOTE THE FOURTH  
> So this epic is not yet at its end, gentle readers. We have concluded what I like to think of as the ATAGO ARC, but we will now be starting the EDO ARC. Which will begin in the very next chapter, and I do hope you'll be along for the ride. My update schedule is likely to be every other Sunday for the next little while, as I'm in my busy season now. 
> 
> Welcome to some of the new readers who have left me notes in the past few weeks! I owe some of you responses, but as today's notes are just SO VERY LONG, I'll write back to you next time. But as always, the reason why I write such long notes to begin with is because of the AMAZING INTERACTION I've been having with all of you. I wouldn't be nearly so motivated if it weren't for our awesome conversations, so keep laying them on me!
> 
> See you next time, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!


	22. Visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tokyo,” Kenshin murmured. He didn’t look up from the plank he continued to work on.
> 
> Enishi glanced over at him. “What?”
> 
> “It’s called Tokyo now. ‘Eastern Capital’.” The plane moved smoothly across the plank under Kenshin’s steady hands. “The Emperor has made his new home there in Edo Castle.”
> 
> Enishi frowned. “The Shogun’s castle?”
> 
> A ghost of a smile flickered across Kenshin’s lips. “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONVENIENT AND USEFUL GLOSSARY  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Shakujou: pewter staff topped with metal rings traditionally carried by Buddhist monks  
> Obousan : honorific for addressing a monk  
> Samue : monk’s work clothes, consisting of a gi-style top and loose pants

**Founding year of Meiji  
(June 1868)**

Kenshin had slept for nearly the first two days after returning home.

Tomoe had stayed by his side as much as she could, running her fingers through his hair and marveling at the fact that she had her husband back again. Hiko-san and Enishi had let her have her space during this time, busying themselves outside with Enishi’s training and various other things. Kenichi’s curiosity about his father prompted him to sit beside her sometimes, but his restless three-year-old’s spirit wouldn’t allow him to sit still for long.

At night, she curled up beside him in his futon, rested her head on his chest, and luxuriated in the sound of his heartbeat in her ear. He was home, the war was over, and nothing could take him away from any of them again.

On the morning of the third day, as they sat around the hearth, eating the morning’s ochazuke, Hiko-san gave Kenshin a stern look over the rim of his bowl.

“It’s time to start work on the house,” he said without preamble. “And that’s not likely to get done with you lazing in bed.”

Beside Hiko-san, Kenichi nodded and pointed a chubby little finger at his father. “Touchan is lazing in bed!” 

Enishi snorted into his ochazuke. 

Hiko-san reached down to ruffle Kenichi’s hair. “That’s right, bozu. You tell him.”

Tomoe gave Hiko-san a sideways glance that was partially a glare. “He’s just come back from a war.”

“Is he still at war?” Hiko-san countered, raising an eyebrow at Tomoe.

She narrowed her eyes slightly at him as she poured Kenshin a fresh cup of tea, who accepted it with a nod.

“I can work on the house,” he murmured through a tangle of hair. (Tomoe resolved to do something about that as soon as the washing up was done.) “I’ve had enough sleep.”

“Excellent.” Hiko-san scraped the last of his ochazuke into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “You’ll earn your night’s sleep today.”

Over the next several days, Kenshin, Hiko-san, and Enishi selected a handful of strong trees, felled them, and laboriously sawed and smoothed them while Kenichi looked on in fascination and occasionally offered them various sticks and twigs he had collected from the ground.

“You said _Kenshin_ was going to earn his night’s sleep,” Enishi grumbled one evening, falling into his futon almost immediately after bolting down his dinner. “Not all of us.”

“I’ve been making you earn your night’s sleep every day since I began training you.” Hiko-san sipped his sake and glowered at Enishi. “This sort of work should be a holiday for you.”

Kenshin looked down into his tea, the hint of a smile flickering across his mouth. 

But while the rest of the household had their own chores to occupy them, Tomoe found that her housekeeping did little to keep her worries at bay. For now that the war was over, she had run out of excuses to avoid returning to Edo - or Tokyo, as it was now called - to see her father.

Before, the thought of reuniting with her father had felt a comfortably long way off in terms of both time and distance. When the war had still been raging and there was no safety outside of the little bubble that had ensconced her on Mount Atago, the day when she would have to return to the house in the samurai district of the old city had seemed far away. 

The inevitable difficult explanations seemed easier to avoid thinking about when they were years in the future, and she could even allow herself to forget that she would one day have to explain to her father that he had a son-in-law and a grandson whom he had never met.

But there were no more reasons to keep her away, save for those she invented for herself. And the longer she put off returning, the worse her eventual shame would be. 

…  
…

“No, don’t stop pulling the plane in the middle of the board!” Hiko shook his head at Enishi. “The point is to remove the ridges from the surface, not enhance them. One smooth stroke from end to end. Watch me.”

As he demonstrated the correct way to smooth the surface of a plank, Hiko kept glancing over at his first apprentice, who was silently (and correctly) planing his own piece of lumber. And if Hiko were going to be honest with himself - which he occasionally found it difficult to do, but which he tried to do more often than not - he did not much like what he saw.

Kenshin had come back from the war physically uninjured. This was no surprise; Hiko had enough faith in his own training methods to know that he had taught Kenshin to fight better than any man or any military division he might encounter. But he had known Kenshin for twelve years. He had raised him, trained him, seen him grow up, and he had a sense for when things weren’t right with him in one way or another.

“Maybe enhanced ridges would look nicer,” Enishi muttered. “Fashionably decorative or something.”

Kenshin’s first foray into the war - his ill-considered decision to become a hitokiri and the aftermath of that ghoulish work - had scarred his mind as well as his face. Hiko had feared that returning to the war, even outside of his earlier role, would have a similar effect on him. And while the change was not as stark as it had been the first time, Hiko could still see it plainly.

Another curl of yellowish wood peeled smoothly away from the surface of the plank as Hiko planed it. Running a hand over its surface, he felt no ridges or splinters. He frowned slightly. If only it were so easy to smooth away the imperfections in a man…

“I don’t especially want to walk or sleep or sit on ‘fashionably decorative enhanced ridges’,” Hiko shot back. “If you do, then bear that in mind for when you build your own house.”

Kenshin had become quiet and withdrawn, much as he had been during those early few months when Hiko had first taken him in. His eyes were often clouded, as though he were looking at something only he could see.

“I don’t have to build my own house,” Enishi snapped. “I already have one in Edo that I don’t even want. Why would I add another one?”

“Tokyo,” Kenshin murmured. He didn’t look up from the plank he continued to work on.

Enishi glanced over at him. “What?”

“It’s called Tokyo now. ‘Eastern Capital’.” The plane moved smoothly across the plank under Kenshin’s steady hands. “The Emperor has made his new home there in Edo Castle.”

Enishi frowned. “The Shogun’s castle?”

A ghost of a smile flickered across Kenshin’s lips. “Yes.”

Hiko could recall very clearly a time when Kenshin would have smiled much more openly. Now, it seemed as though his emotions had been dulled. He seemed exhausted, more mentally than physically.

He wondered how worried Tomoe had become.

“So the Emperor just kicked the Shogun out of his own house?” Enishi asked.

“No.” An unreadable expression slid across Kenshin’s face, but didn’t land. “That took almost four years.”

Four years, Hiko thought grimly, during which Kenshin had been immersed in the business of killing men. Men who, in all likelihood, had not been evil at heart but simply beholden to the wrong masters. Men whose deaths had mounted up until the weight of them had become too much for Kenshin to carry.

He set aside the now-smooth plank and replaced it with another, his hands working the plane as his mind grappled with the problem of his apprentice. 

This was good work for Kenshin to do; it would occupy his hands with a different sort of labor than they had become used to in the past few years. The act of building something - something tangible, something physical, something whose progress could be measured every day and which would be permanent thereafter - was healthy for a man. 

Perhaps, in time, it might even bring a real smile to his idiot apprentice’s face.

…  
…

The passing days became weeks, during which the skeleton of the house rose steadily around Tomoe as she worked and watched. 

The new construction, it seemed, would likely double the size of the original house, and she found herself looking longingly forward to the increased space. She had grown accustomed to the cramped quarters of the house over the past several years, but the simple fact that five people were living in a house that had clearly only been designed for two could no longer be ignored. Even her father’s house in Tokyo-

She stopped in mid-thought, a guilty pang piercing her heart as her hands stilled. 

There was no preventing the guilt from continuing to ambush her at inopportune moments. However much she may have tried to keep herself busy, to occupy her hands and her mind and to focus on tending to the house and her son and her husband, the fact was that she had no good reason to continue avoiding her obligation to see her father. 

No good reason, save fear.

Up here on the mountain, surrounded by the family she had gathered to her and the comfortable familiarity of her surroundings, everything made perfect sense. Nothing had to be questioned; nothing needed to be explained. Life simply was the way it was.

But her father would have questions, and she had no idea how she might answer them to his satisfaction. She could see his face clearly in her mind - not angry, never angry, always inscrutable, but with piercing and discerning eyes - and she could almost feel herself wilt under the disappointment she knew she would see there.

And yet, she wanted to see happiness there as well. 

He had a grandson, after all, and a son-in-law, and both she and Enishi had not only survived the war but thrived, and there was plenty for him to be pleased with. She wanted only that pleasure, not the uncomfortable road that would lead to it.

She resolved to bring it up that evening over dinner.

…  
…

“Not a bad bit of progress, if I dare say so myself.” Hiko brushed a sweaty tendril of hair out of his face and took a long drink of the cooled tea that Tomoe had brought out to them. 

Kenshin sat beside him, the both of them stripped to the waist, their morning having been spent fitting the rafters into place over the skeletal framework of the new portion of the house. Enishi had been dispatched into the sundries shed to find any spare thatch, and the three of them would spend the rest of the day gathering more in order to complete the roof.

“Once the roof’s been thatched, we can complete the walls at our leisure.” Hiko smiled in a self-satisfied way. “We’ll lay the floorboards last of all. And there’ll even be a small engawa, which ought to please your wife.”

Kenshin smiled faintly into his teacup. “She’ll like having a place to sit and watch the rain.”

Not long ago, Hiko knew, Kenshin’s smile would have been broader. His eyes would have been glazed over with the thought of his wife’s happiness. It would have been thoroughly nauseating to watch, and yet Hiko felt somewhat bereft at its absence. 

“And you?” He set down his own cup and fixed his eyes on his idiot apprentice. “I can’t imagine you’ll let her sit and watch it alone.”

“Of course not.” Kenshin sipped at his tea. “One of us will have to keep our son from running out into the rain, after all.”

“All right, so…” Enishi came from around the side of the house, wiping his hands down on his yukata. “We have some thatch, but probably not enough to cover everything.” He shrugged. “Or maybe we do?”

Hiko rolled his eyes. “That may be the most inadequate assessment I’ve ever heard.” He jerked a thumb at Kenshin. “Including from him.”

Kenshin took another sip of tea.

Enishi shrugged again. “Well, how would I know? My house in Edo - or _Tokyo_ , I guess - has a normal, tiled roof, not any of this…” He gestured vaguely about. “This.”

“Peasantry?” Kenshin murmured into his tea. 

“Well then, you’re welcome to make the trip down the mountain and back as many times as it takes to bring back as many tiles as are necessary to cover the roof.” Hiko glared at his second apprentice, noting as he did so that he was every bit as tiresome as his first. “And pay for them as well.”

“I didn’t say either of those things.” Enishi scowled at the both of them. “Besides, all the roofs in the village are thatched too, so I doubt they’re hiding tile anywhere.” His expression turned sly suddenly. “I do have one question though.”

Hiko scowled and tossed back the last of his tea. “Of course you do.”

Enishi pulled what looked like a rolled-up ukiyo-e print from the sleeve of his yukata, unrolled it, and shoved it in Hiko’s face. “What’s the octopus doing to that lady?”

Kenshin coughed a mouthful of tea back into his cup. Hiko, however, turned a positively fiery glare on his idiot apprentice.

“I thought I told you to get rid of that thing when you were a child!” he growled, silently cursing the previous occupant of the house for his perversions and himself for his negligence.

“You told me to put it back!” Kenshin wiped the dribble off his chin with the back of his hand. “And I put it right back where I found it.”

“Oh.” Enishi grinned at Hiko. “So it’s _your_ ukiyo-e print?”

“First of all,” Hiko spat, glowering at Kenshin, “I absolutely did not tell you to put it back.” He swung around on Enishi. “And second of all -”

The tinkling sound of metal lightly rattling against metal broke sharply into their argument. Hiko paused, trying to remember. Exactly where had he heard that sound before? And why did it seem so foreboding at this particular moment?

Enishi’s brow furrowed. “Sounds like a monk got lost on his way up to the shrine.”

As soon as the words were out of Enishi’s mouth, the source of the alien sound sprang to Hiko’s mind. It was the sound of a shakujou, its metal rings rattling noisily as the monk who held it walked on his pilgrimage. But Enishi was right; the shrine was in the other direction, and what would a Buddhist monk want with a Shinto shrine anyway?

An extremely unwelcome idea sprang to Hiko’s mind, and he quickly dismissed it. _No_ , he assured himself, _surely not…_

“Here, take your ukiyo-e.” Enishi shoved the print into Hiko’s hands and dashed off in the direction of the potentially lost monk.

“Yeah, Shishou.” A small smile tugged at the corner of Kenshin’s mouth. “Take your ukiyo-e.”

Hiko shot both his apprentices a very nasty look as he rolled up the offending print and hurried off to shove it out of the way in the shed. What a monk would think of such a thing, he had no desire to contemplate. And even less desire to find out firsthand.

Emerging from the shed, dusting his hands against his thighs, he looked in the direction Enishi had gone. And his stomach gave an uncomfortable flop as he saw, trailing his second apprentice, his brother Jiyu coming into sight over the rise in the path. His shakujou clinked with every alternate step, the brass rings jangling as the staff struck the packed earth. And beneath the wide hat of woven rushes, his face looked oddly relieved.

Kenshin shrugged back into the kimono he had left hanging down the back of his thighs, hurried forward, and bowed. 

“Jiyu-obousan,” he murmured. “It’s been some time.”

“Indeed,” Jiyu agreed. “Nearly four years, in fact.”

Enishi looked from Kenshin to Jiyu and back again. “Wait, you know each other?”

Hiko shrugged back into his own kimono, inwardly screaming _Damn, damn, damn_ as he tried to imagine why his brother would come there. 

“Oh yes,” Jiyu said serenely. “Seijuro is my older brother.”

The look Kenshin turned on Hiko could have melted steel. “Your _brother_?”

The door to the house rattled open and Tomoe emerged, wiping her hands on a towel. Kenichi clung to her leg. “Did I hear correctly?” she said mildly, bowing politely to Jiyu. “You’re Hiko-san’s brother?”

“Jiji have brother!” Kenichi said cheerfully, then bowed after Tomoe gently nudged the back of his head. 

Enishi, not one to allow himself to be left out of things, executed his own hurried bow. 

Hiko suddenly wanted very badly for a fissure to open up in the mountainside and swallow him whole. Either that, or a very large drink of sake.

“Hello, Jiyu,” he managed somewhat stiffly. “I hope you’re not in any trouble?”

“Yes, Obousan,” Kenshin said through gritted teeth. “I hope your older brother hasn’t caused you any trouble.”

“Won’t you join us for lunch?” Tomoe offered with an inclination of her head. “There’s onigiri, and some of them have plums.”

Hiko felt very much as though the world were simply moving on around him, without his permission and regardless of his desire or input. It was bewildering, somewhat overwhelming, and certainly unwelcome.

“Well then, I suppose you’d better come in,” he muttered.

He could _feel_ Kenshin glaring at the back of his head as everyone filed into the house. 

Tomoe, on the other hand, seemed quite pleased to have a guest. She took Jiyu’s hat, shakujou, and traveling bag, then led him out to the bath shed to wash up. While he was doing that, she arranged the space around the hearth, setting out an extra cup of tea and a dish of onigiri. 

Kenshin continued to glare balefully at Hiko, but whatever he might have been bursting to say, he kept it to himself when Jiyu returned and joined them at the hearth.

“We’ve never had a visitor.” Tomoe set Kenichi’s meal down before him. “Not in all the time I’ve been here.”

“I’ve had visitors,” Hiko groused. “Except every single one of them ended up staying.”

“Hey, we’re helping to build this place,” Enishi said. “It’s our house now too.”

“Please.” Tomoe gestured toward Jiyu’s plate with a smile. “Eat.”

“Eat!” Kenichi echoed through a mouthful of his own onigiri.

Hiko took a fortifying drink of tea, wishing it were sake instead, and very pointedly did not look at Kenshin. “So what brings you up here, Jiyu? You’ve never come to see me before.”

His brother chose to ignore the question, instead murmuring a quiet prayer over the food before lifting one of the onigiri to his mouth and taking a bite. 

“It’s quite good,” he said to Tomoe. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Tomoe murmured with a slight inclination of the head. “How long will you be staying?”

Hiko bristled at that. Staying? He wanted to know what his brother was doing there first, before he even contemplated asking him to stay for any amount of time.

“Oh, I hadn’t considered such a thing.” Jiyu set the onigiri back in its dish and rested his hands on his knees. “There’s a temple not too far from here, or I can go back up to the shrine and spend the night there.”

Enishi looked at him. “Go back up?”

Jiyu nodded. “I walked there first. The priest’s wife gave me directions to get here.”

Hiko winced. 

Of course the people at the shrine would know where he lived now, after he’d escorted Chiba-san to the house and back. And since he’d brought the midwife up and back several times, any fool inquiring in the village would be able to find him if they so chose. His privacy, which he valued so highly, seemed to be a thing of the past. 

“You’re here now,” Tomoe said firmly, with a fleeting glance at Hiko before looking back toward Jiyu. “You should at least stay the night before you move on to wherever it is you’re heading.”

“I was heading here, and tomorrow I’ll head back to Asukaderaji.” Jiyu reached for an onigiri, hesitated, then said, “Now that I’ve seen with my own eyes that my brother and Kenshin-kun are all right, my heart is settled.”

“Brother,” Kenshin said flatly.

“I never even knew Hiko-san had a brother,” Tomoe said mildly, her face turned away from Hiko’s glare. “But then, you said he last saw you four years ago, and that would have been before I came to live here.”

“Kenichi is three,” Kenichi offered helpfully, holding up three rice-sticky fingers.

Jiyu smiled at the boy. “Kenichi-kun looks just like his father.”

“Kenichi and Touchan have same hair!” Kenichi patted his head with those very same rice-sticky fingers.

“Well, I’ve lived here since my seventh summer,” Kenshin said, “and I’ve met Jiyu-obousan several times. Yet this is the first time I’m hearing that Shishou has a brother.”

“Two brothers, actually.” Jiyu nibbled on his onigiri. He didn’t seem to notice Kenshin’s outraged expression. “I thought, perhaps, it was Seijuro’s story to tell, but quite a bit has changed after four years.”

“If you’re angry with me, there are less painful ways to show it,” Hiko growled. “Like clubbing me over the head with your shakujou, for instance.”

“Who could ever be angry with you?” Jiyu said serenely. “Niisan.”

Both Kenshin and Enishi snorted into their respective teacups. Tomoe hid a small smile, and Hiko tried desperately to quell the sinking feeling in his chest as he realized that the rest of the household had allied themselves with his brother.

Perhaps he really should have mentioned it to Kenshin before now…

…

After lunch, Tomoe ushered the lot of them out of the house, including Kenichi.

“I’m going to cook a vegetarian meal for Jiyu-obousan’s dinner,” she said serenely. “I’ll call if I need any help.”

Enishi looked at Kenshin. “She’s not going to call.”

“No.” Kenshin shook his head. 

Kenichi clung to Kenshin’s hakama. “Kaachan not want help.”

The thatch Enishi had found in the shed was not, in fact, enough to cover the expanded roof. And as the boy had never gone through the laborious process of cutting, drying, and weaving thatch, Hiko left Kenshin in charge of teaching him, which gave him time to talk to his brother alone.

In the woods, where no one would hear them.

They walked in silence for a bit, Jiyu strolling with his hands clasped loosely behind his back as if he had traversed those woods many times before.

Finally he said, “One would think you were not entirely pleased to see me after four years, Seijuro.” His tone was not accusatory.

“I’m not displeased,” Hiko countered, feeling an unfamiliar sense of awkwardness as he did. “But your timing was hardly the best.”

Jiyu glanced at him. “Would there have been a better time?”

“My apprentice hasn’t been back from the war for very long.” Hiko returned his brother’s glance. “The experience was somewhat strenuous for him, as you can probably imagine.”

Jiyu hummed in response to that, and they continued to walk in silence until they reached the river. For a long moment, his brother seemed to study the sun-dappled water.

“The rumors reached Asukaderaji,” he said quietly, eyes fixed on the river. “Of the red-haired demon called Battousai who practiced a sword style so terrifyingly fast that men would fall before they even saw him.”

Hiko felt a twinge as he remembered how he himself had felt the first time he had heard those rumors, and tried to connect them with the boy he had raised from the age of seven. 

“I didn’t want to believe it was Kenshin-kun, but…” Jiyu looked at him. “Who else could it have been?”

“I didn’t want him to go the first time.” Hiko’s voice sounded dull in his own ears. “I tried to tell him how foolish an idea it was, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I finally just told him to go and learn the hard way if he was so determined.”

He heaved a deep sigh and stared at the river as though it would give him an answer. But he recalled the words of ancient philosophy that said water’s nature was to assume any form placed upon it. That it had no shape of its own, but if poured into a container, it would take the shape of that container. And that therefore any answers the water would give him would simply be the ones he already had.

“I spent a long time regretting that mistake.”

Jiyu crossed his arms, tucking each hand into the opposite sleeve of his samue, and returned his gaze to the river. Perhaps he was also looking for answers that would never come.

“I thought you were dead, Seijuro.” He said the words very quietly. “I thought Kenshin-kun had mastered the style. How else could a boy be given leave to join a rebel insurgency?”

An overwhelming surge of guilt washed over Hiko with sudden and surprising force. His knees nearly buckled beneath it, as they had the first time he had donned his shishou’s cloak and felt the weight of it drag him down. 

His brother had believed him dead. And in all his ponderings about passing on the style in such a way as to leave his makeshift family unhurt, he had never given a thought to his actual brother.

“A great deal has changed since you and I last spoke, Jiyu.” Hiko’s voice was quiet, softer than his customary gruff bark, and he turned from the water which could give him no answers to look his brother in the face. “I believe I owe you something of an explanation.”

Jiyu listened with the sort of patience that only a monk could muster while Hiko laid everything out: Kenshin’s reasons for returning to the war, the way in which Tomoe, Enishi, and Kenichi had become his family, and his growing misgivings about the manner in which the succession of the style would continue. Hiko felt drained by the end of it, and desperately in need of sake, but he needed to hear Jiyu’s assessment of the whole thing as well.

“I took Enishi on as my second apprentice knowing full well that I’d have to make the same choice in his case.” Hiko sighed. “But he needed it as much as Kenshin ever did. And now, I have to rethink the entire succession.” 

He looked out at the river from the rock he had seated himself on. Of course, the river still failed to produce the answers he was looking for. 

“Three hundred years of tradition, and it rests on me to find a better way.” He shook his head with a bitter laugh. “And I haven’t come up with a thing.”

“‘To insist on a practice that served you in the past is to carry the raft on your back after you have crossed the river’,” Jiyu murmured. He sat cross-legged next to Hiko. “But I do think, knowing you as I do, that you wouldn’t find it acceptable for Kenshin-kun to never master the style.”

“No.” 

The response was out of Hiko’s mouth before he’d even had time to consider it. Not that he would have needed to; Jiyu was right about how well he knew him.

“When I mastered the style, I learned something that I doubt I could ever have learned any other way.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Not the physical technique. I could teach him that in the space of a few minutes.” His eyes lost their focus as he stared at the rippling water. “But there is no other way to gain a true appreciation for life except in the face of certain death. And he needs that.” He turned back to look into his brother’s eyes. “All men, I think, need that.”

“Hasn’t he faced enough death?” Jiyu returned. 

“He’s never faced it.” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve never understood the power of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.”

He breathed deeply and flexed his hands on his knees. “Never once, in all the countless fights he’s been in, has Kenshin ever come close to being in danger of dying. He’s faster, stronger, more skilled than any opponent he could ever face.” He smiled a brittle smile, devoid of any trace of humor. “Except me.”

Jiyu’s gaze wandered back to the water. “Then hasn’t he caused enough?”

“Absolutely.” Again the response came without hesitation. “And I wouldn’t want him to be responsible for any more death regardless, especially mine.” He shook his head. “I don’t want that for him. Nor for any of the rest of them.” An involuntary chill tickled his spine at the thought of what would become of the family in that situation. “If I let that happen, they would all lose so much more than I’d ever imagined.”

An expression Hiko couldn’t quite parse flickered across Jiyu’s face before he smiled. “I suppose you won’t consider asking Kenshin-kun what he wants?”

Hiko gave him a sour look in response.

Jiyu didn’t look even the slightest bit perturbed at that. “You’ve gathered a family to you, Seijuro. I think you’ve gained so much more than you ever realized you were capable of.”

“I didn’t do any of the actual gathering,” Hiko grumbled, suddenly and inexplicably irritable. “They just wouldn’t leave me alone.” 

“Including a little boy who calls you ‘Jiji’,” Jiyu said easily. 

“Yes,” Hiko muttered, a smile threatening to displace his comfortably irritable glower. “Including him.”

…

Jiyu did not return to Asukaderaji the following morning. Nor did he make any preparations to do so for the morning after that. 

Instead, he stayed on to assist them with the house, which came along remarkably well with the addition of an extra pair of skilled hands. It turned out that Jiyu had learned a thing or two about carpentry from repairing the buildings at Asukaderaji, and he had a steady hand on the plane, saw, and hammer. 

Regrettably, however, he had no experience with thatched roofs, and so remained on the ground while Hiko and Kenshin enclosed the top of the house. 

“We may be done in a matter of days rather than weeks,” Hiko offered as he lashed a section of thatch into place from his perch atop the rafters. “With the four of us working on it.”

Tomoe had warmed immediately to the idea of having a houseguest, and apart from turning out a steady stream of creative vegetarian dishes, had insisted on washing Jiyu’s travel-stained samue. 

Jiyu had at least attempted to protest. “I couldn’t ask you to do such a thing.”

“It’s filthy,” Tomoe had said flatly, and that had been that. 

Which left Jiyu nearly swimming in Hiko’s borrowed training gi and hakama. He might have been nearly as tall as his brother, but he was far more lanky and ended up almost wrapping the gi double around his frame. 

“Try the boots,” Hiko had suggested with a snort, the first time he’d seen Jiyu in his clothes.

“I prefer not to wear animal hides,” Jiyu demurred, sparing himself from the potentially amusing ordeal of having a three-year-old point and laugh at him as he stumbled about.

Kenichi, for his part, was fascinated with Jiyu’s shakujou and had spent the better part of several days clomping around with it, clutching the staff tightly with both chubby little hands and delighting in causing the metal rings to clank against each other.

“Kaachan’s going to be upset if you knock things over with that, bozu,” Hiko had told the boy with a smile. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Perhaps you’ll have another monk in the family,” Jiyu mused over a cup of cooled tea, while Kenichi stomped around in the clearing, rattling the shakujou back and forth.

“You’ll be the first to know if that happens, Obousan,” Kenshin agreed, before shooting a glance at Hiko. “Though some people won’t find out for at least ten, possibly twelve, years.”

Hiko very charitably refrained from reminding his idiot apprentice just how much of an idiot he was.

Soon enough, the house had been completed. There was now enough room inside for the six of them to sleep comfortably, spread out around the hearth with a shaku’s space between separate futons. Which meant that when Jiyu left, the place would feel even roomier.

When Jiyu announced on the following morning that he would be setting off back to Asukaderaji the next day, Tomoe immediately retreated to the kitchen space. 

“Dinner tonight needs to be special,” she offered by way of explanation, and the rest of them were left to appreciate the newly-remodeled house and entertain Kenichi.

They ate until they were comfortably stuffed, and once Kenichi was asleep in Tomoe’s futon, they sat out on the new engawa with cups of tea. And while it was a small engawa - flat against the ground and just in the front of the house - they had built it with their own hands and it was theirs.

Enishi was clearly pleased with the result; Kenshin equally but less boisterously so. And Hiko felt a sense of accomplishment and contentment that he could not remember having felt in a very long time, if ever.

“Do try not to let four years go by before we next meet,” Jiyu said to Hiko the next morning, after the goodbyes had been said all around and Hiko had walked with him down the mountain. 

“Well, you know where I live now,” grumbled Hiko. “So there’s little chance of that.”

“And bring Kenichi-kun when you next come to Asukaderaji.” A small smile flitted across Jiyu’s mouth. “I’ll sneak him up to the bonsho bell and let him ring it before dinner.”

Hiko couldn’t keep the smile from crossing his face at the idea of his brother holding Kenichi up to ring the bell. “Children do enjoy loud noises. And there are likely to be children his age there.”

“Always.” Jiyu hesitated a moment, then, “It’s a three-day walk to Asukaderaji. I’ll take my leave now. Do thank Tomoe-san again for her hospitality.” He turned and headed away, shakujou rings clinking together with each step. 

Hiko’s mind turned suddenly - and surprisingly - to the subject of how long it might be before Kenichi was up to making a three-day journey. His brother hadn’t even departed yet, and already he found himself looking forward to their next visit.

Life was so incredibly strange...

“Seijuro?” Abruptly Jiyu stopped, turned back, and looked at him with a searching expression. “When you find your answer, come and tell me.”

“My answer.” Hiko’s eyebrows knit, and he frowned. “After three hundred years, an answer isn’t likely to show itself soon.”

Still, he clasped his brother’s hand firmly as he bade him goodbye for the last time. “But you have my word.”

And when Jiyu had faded into the distance and Hiko turned to head back up the mountain, he found that he was doing so with some reluctance.

When he reached the house, he found the others sitting in a group on the engawa. Kenichi sat between his parents, his face red from crying, demanding to know when Obousan was coming back. Enishi wore a look of anxious trepidation, Kenshin looked somewhat apprehensive, and Tomoe’s face was set in an expression of uneasy determination.

“We’ve been talking,” she said unnecessarily, pressing a calming kiss to the top of Kenichi’s head. “And it’s time for us to make the trip to Tokyo.” She took a deep, somewhat unsteady breath. “To see my father.”

Hiko suppressed a cringe. 

The thought of going to a city, particularly a city as large and crowded as the former Edo, made his skin crawl. He hated crowds, even the relatively small ones down in the village, which was one of the many reasons he had chosen to live so far up Mount Atago. What it might be like in the largest city in the country, he did not want to imagine.

But Tomoe had welcomed his brother into their house, and he knew she had not seen or spoken with her father for nearly as long as he hadn’t spoken with Jiyu. The man deserved, at least, to know that his son and daughter were alive and flourishing. And to meet his son-in-law and grandson.

A moment later, he had shrugged off the intrusive consternation and squared his shoulders.

“I suppose we’d better close up the house properly, then.” He shot her a wry look. “I don’t want this hard work to have gone to waste if we stay in Tokyo for too long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Hey-ho, they're going to Tokyo! 
> 
> Even if they still think of it as Edo. I mean, if they suddenly up and announced that New York City was going back to its old name of NIEUW AMSTERDAM, I think it would take people a long time to adjust to that nonsense, ya dig? And I wonder how many people in CZECHIA still refer to their country as CZECH REPUBLIC (or, ya know, Česká Republika) since they only changed the name in 2016? I feel like this sort of mental shift takes time. 
> 
> Especially if it wasn't really a peaceful change, but a HEY, THE RADICAL TERRORISTS JUST WON THE WAR AND ARE CHANGING THE WHOLE GOVERNMENT. So that's where they're at now.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this breather chapter, because the gang is up and moving.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> As always, your comments are simply the best. I may have a small group of readers, but holy fuck, you are all amazing. Thank you for your continued commentary. It always brings a large, doofy smile to my face, and in this year of our Lord 2020, every small pleasure is super important.
> 
> So as always, don't be shy. Flood my inbox!


	23. Musashino

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re here,” she said through a suddenly dry mouth.
> 
> No one moved.
> 
> “Oh, for…” Hiko-san came forward with an irritable shake of his head and pounded three times on the door with his fist. 
> 
> “We’re not breaking into the place, Shishou,” Kenshin said mildly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEARTY GLOSSARY O' TERMS  
> Genpuku : boy’s coming of age ceremony, occurring between the ages of 11-21  
> Tokaido : walking route connecting Tokyo to Kyoto  
> Wakizashi : short sword, companion to a katana (long sword)  
> Omiyamairi : Shinto rite of passage for newborn babies  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Fusuma : sliding room dividers, often painted or decorated. Different from shoji, which are used around the perimeter of a house, to open it to the outside  
> Seiza : traditional Japanese way of sitting on the knees  
> Nagajuban : kimono underlayer  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack

**Founding year of Meiji  
(August 1868)**

Despite his wife’s decision to go to Tokyo as soon as possible, it still took a few weeks to ready the house and the land.

For one, deciding to make the trip in late summer meant an early harvest, otherwise they’d return to an overgrown and potentially choked garden. Kenshin and Enishi pulled everything from the ground that looked even remotely promising, and Tomoe set about pickling all of it.

Kenshin took several trips to the river as well, returning with baskets of fish to be salted and dried. They didn’t know how long they’d be in Tokyo, and so they couldn’t risk returning to Mount Atago with no food stored.

He took his new sword with him to the river every time. No one questioned such a thing. They were long used to his habits. 

Painstakingly he practiced sheathing and resheathing his new sword - over and over and over again - until he could do it just as quickly as he had always done. Until he could do it without looking.

Until he could do it without cutting his fingers. 

The cutting edge faced the _wrong way_ and every part of him screamed that he was _about to cut his fingers off_ and he was doing it wrong, it was wrong, it was _wrong!_

It was like his twelfth summer all over again, when he had first received his genpuku sword, and his shishou had worked him for weeks and weeks, doing nothing but sheathing and resheathing the sword until he could do it perfectly and without looking and without cutting his damn fingers.

He had cut many fingers then, and in reteaching himself, he cut his fingers once again.

That twelve-year-old was six years in the past. What had taken him weeks then took him days now. 

They had medicine in the tansu chest suitable for healing sword cuts, and he squirreled it away in the sleeve of his yukata before bathing. No need to draw attention to himself.

No need to worry anyone.

They decided to board up the house and paste a note to the front. Hiko suggested ‘This house is not abandoned, so get lost,’ but Tomoe worked it into something more agreeable.

Traveling the Tokaido with a three year old boy was an exercise in patience for all involved. 

Kenichi switched from boundless, enthusiastic energy, skipping ahead and encouraging them all to hurry up, to stopping and investigating every flower, rock, and twig on the ground, to absolute lethargy that meant he couldn’t take “not even one more step, Touchan! Not even one!”

He loved his son with more words than he’d ever know how to say.

Sometimes Kenshin carried his son on his shoulders. Sometimes Hiko took a turn, and once or twice, Enishi was amenable to such a thing.

The first two nights, they camped in the woods, well off the road, but on the third night, Tomoe insisted they stop in a travelers’ inn at one of the way stations. 

“It’s going to be the third night of travel tonight,” she said flatly. “We all need to wash.”

“There are streams, you know,” Enishi offered, but Tomoe’s expression said that such makeshift measures were not up to her standards.

“Heated bathing water is one of the great achievements of civilization,” Hiko put in sagely before furrowing his brows. “I’m sure there are others, but they escape me at the moment.”

“You must be very tired,” Kenshin said mildly, “if you’ve forgotten sake.”

“Not tired.” Hiko’s eyes narrowed. “Sober. Which is far worse.”

They found an inn that had a large restaurant on the first floor and two communal sleeping rooms on the second. A public bathhouse was only a short walk away, and Kenshin felt all of his muscles unclench the moment he sank into the hot water.

“My wife is the smartest one among us,” he murmured, closing his eyes and breathing in the steam.

(It was too bad she was on the women’s side of the bathhouse, along with Kenichi.)

“Certainly smarter than you,” Hiko agreed, his head tilted back against the edge of the enormous soaking tub. It must have been a great luxury for him to have a tub in which he could stretch out; the rain barrel at the house on Atago was miniscule by comparison.

“Why didn’t we just claim we’re samurai?” Enishi asked. “And stay at one of the nicer inns?”

Kenshin cracked an eye open. “On what money?”

Enishi frowned. “You’ve been bringing home money this entire time. I watched you give it to Neechan.”

“Your sister manages the house, boy.” Hiko didn’t open his eyes. “Which means she gets to manage the money as well. And she very likely understands what a frivolity it would be to spend nights at fancy inns.”

Enishi snorted at that and sank lower into the bath. 

Kenshin exhaled and closed his eyes.

The restaurant was very crowded, and dinner that evening was a simple, yet filling affair of hot soba topped with dried fish and vegetables. Shortly after, Tomoe announced she was going to put Kenichi to bed.

“I didn’t think I was tired,” Enishi yawned. “But the moment you said ‘bed’, I realized that I am.”

“Come outside with me for a moment, Kenshin.” Hiko stood up, looking around at the roomful of people with clear distaste. “I need a breath of fresh air if I’m going to spend the night in this pickling jar.”

...  
...

It had not escaped Hiko’s attention that his idiot apprentice was concealing something. He had never been able to hide anything particularly well, and Hiko had only gotten better at noticing it with time.

When Kenshin stepped outside, Hiko beckoned to him and took off at a striding pace. 

“I can’t be expected to sleep in there if I don’t have something to help make it bearable,” he snorted by way of explanation. It didn’t take him long to find what passed for a pub, where he slapped a hand down on the counter and demanded a jug of sake. 

“And maybe a cup to drink it with,” Kenshin said mildly. “We’ll return the cup.”

The proprietor narrowed his eyes at that, but he did give them two small cups. 

Back outside the inn, Hiko sat on a log bench and uncorked the jug. He downed his first cup at a gulp, let out a long sigh of pleasure at the familiar flavor, and immediately poured himself another.

He poured one for Kenshin as an afterthought.

“So,” he began as soon as Kenshin looked somewhat comfortable. “How long were you going to wait before telling me?”

Kenshin stiffened for an almost-imperceptible second, then took a long sip of sake. “Tell you what?”

“Well, let me see.” Hiko tossed back his sake for punctuation before reeling off his list. “You’ve been turning up with new cuts on your fingers every day without fail. You took the astringent out of the tansu chest and hoped I wouldn’t notice. And you came back from the war without your genpuku sword or that wakizashi you used to have.”

A series of predictable expressions, ranging from surprise to disappointment, flickered across Kenshin’s face before settling on resignation. 

“I didn’t want to worry anyone,” he said quietly. “The past few years have had enough worries.”

Hiko refrained from swatting his idiot apprentice on the top of his impossibly thick skull. He did not, however, manage to refrain from rolling his eyes.

“Because hiding things from a man who knows you better than anyone is an excellent way to avoid worrying him.” He shook his head, his eyes narrowing. “Sometimes I wonder how I ever managed to find the patience to train you.”

“Mostly by kicking me off the cliff and into the waterfall.” A hint of a smile ghosted across Kenshin’s lips. “Or into mud puddles. Or the river.”

“You never learned to dodge properly.” Hiko scowled, suppressing a smile. “But I’m not interested in reliving good times. You have something to tell me, I think.”

Kenshin stared hard into his sake cup. Finally he said, “I went to see Arai Shakku before coming home. He gave me a new sword.”

Hiko raised an eyebrow. “Did your genpuku sword break?”

“No.” 

Abruptly Kenshin set the sake cup aside on the log bench, stood, and walked forward a few steps, though he didn’t seem inclined to go much further. He spoke with his back to Hiko.

“I gave it back to him. The wakizashi as well.”

Hiko let that confession wash over him for a moment, realization and understanding settling in as he looked at his apprentice’s back. The sword that had marked his transition into manhood, that had initiated him into the higher techniques of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu (from which had come his infamous hitokiri name) had become too heavy for him to carry any longer. The weight of the lives it had taken had finally grown too much to bear.

“I see,” he said simply. 

“I don’t know if you do,” Kenshin murmured. 

He hesitated a moment, then turned, pulled the sword from his belt, and tossed it to Hiko, who caught it easily in one hand but was instantly surprised by its weight. Frowning, he hefted it and held it up to examine it. 

The sheath was not of lacquered hardwood, but of black steel.

“Why…?” he muttered to himself, brows furrowed as he turned the weapon over in his hands. He drew the blade halfway out of the sheath, intending to try the sword’s balance - and stopped in astonishment.

“A reverse-bladed sword?”

The cutting edge, incredibly, was on the inner curve of the blade, leaving the natural striking edge of the sword flat and dull. Drawing the sword fully from the sheath, he found the balance absolutely perfect, the curve smooth and beautiful, the surface flawless and undimpled, the cutting edge an absolute razor - but everything strangely out of place.

And then he understood.

“The cuts on your fingers?” he asked, sliding the blade back into its sheath with a ringing snap. “You’re actually planning to wield this sword?”

“Yes,” Kenshin said immediately, then fell silent. He turned away again, and after a moment, said, “It’s that or nothing, and I don’t think… I don’t think nothing would be acceptable.” 

Very quietly, he added, “I have to try.”

“A sword is a weapon, Kenshin,” Hiko reminded him just as quietly, the strange sword still in his hand and confusing thoughts whirling around in his mind. “And a weapon whose killing edge is always turned backward against its wielder is a dangerous thing.”

“I know.” Kenshin sighed, and the sound seemed to rattle through his entire body. 

“But that’s what you want.” 

Hiko spoke the words as he realized them. His idiot apprentice wanted to place himself in danger every time he drew his sword against an adversary. With the edge of the blade facing him rather than his target, he would have to fight with the constant awareness of his own mortality. But moreover, he wanted a way to fight those adversaries without killing them. 

“You want to use Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu without taking any more lives.”

“I don’t want to kill again.” Kenshin said the words so quietly, Hiko had to strain to hear him. He turned on his heel and looked at him. His eyes were pained.

Haunted.

“Ever again.”

“And you think that’s possible?” Hiko felt Kenshin’s gaze as though it were made of sharpened steel. Felt the pain behind it, and knew exactly how it hurt Kenshin to carry the weight of the dead. 

But for all the men they had both killed, and for as little good as those deaths had accomplished, there was still the eternal truth that a sword was a weapon, and that the art of the sword was the art of murder.

“I have to try,” Kenshin said again. “I owe it to…” He shook his head. “Everyone.”

“Everyone.” Hiko raised an eyebrow. “Does your wife know, then?”

Kenshin nodded. “Of course.”

Wordlessly, Hiko handed the enigmatic sword back to his apprentice. He had the foreboding feeling that the strange weapon, and the monumental (and likely futile) task that Kenshin had set for himself would dominate his thoughts for days to come.

Certainly they would rule his dreams that night.

…  
…

A week later, when Tomoe realized that they were only one more day’s journey from her father’s house in Tokyo, she felt the overwhelming and panicked urge to simply turn around and flee back to Mount Atago. Back to where everything was safe and comfortable, where there would be no need for awkward and stilted explanations of where she had been and what she had done and why she had never mentioned her husband or her son…

“Don’t hang back now,” Hiko-san admonished her gruffly. “We can be there before nightfall if we keep up a decent pace.”

“Faster, Kaachan!” squealed Kenichi from atop Hiko-san’s shoulders. “Jiji, go faster!”

Kenshin slid his hand into Tomoe’s and gave it a gentle squeeze. Under his breath, he murmured, “Apprehensive?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.” She heard the tremor in her own voice as she squeezed Kenshin’s hand back. “There’s so much I haven’t told him.”

What if he refused to recognize her once he had learned who Kenshin was? What if he had fallen from his position because of the war and blamed Kenshin for it? What if he and Enishi ended up quarreling? What if he looked at her with the same disappointment and shame as everyone else in the neighborhood had done before she had left for Kyoto? 

What if, what if, what if…

“Do you remember that lady who used to walk through the neighborhood every morning in the summer, selling fruit? She had the best persimmons.” Enishi backpedaled a few steps until he was walking next to Tomoe. “Think she’s still around?”

Somewhere in the back of Tomoe’s mind echoed a small, amused voice that said Enishi remembered everything, so long as it had to do with food.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s been years.”

So much could change in four years. Indeed, so much could change in the blink of an eye…

In what felt like no time at all, they were inside the city itself. Another half hour of walking would bring them into the samurai district of Musashino, to her father’s very doorstep.

She stopped dead in her tracks. “We need to find a bathhouse.”

Everyone turned to look at her. Kenshin raised an eyebrow.

Kenichi, still atop Hiko-san’s shoulders, shook his head furiously. “Kenichi not want bath!”

“Kenichi needs a bath,” she said firmly. “We all do.” 

The idea of arriving at her father’s house looking unkempt and travel-worn suddenly filled her with dread. Her father, she knew, would be immaculately and impeccably put-together. She would feel at even more of a disadvantage if they came to his door looking like ragged beggars.

Enishi shrugged. “Can’t we just… bathe there?”

The look on Tomoe’s face must have made her thoughts about Enishi’s suggestion explicitly clear, as Kenshin immediately said, “All right. We’ll bathe.”

A brief walk brought them to a public bathhouse she had never used before, but remembered from her walks around the city. She gave Enishi a very meaningful look as they separated, making it very clear that she would send him right back into the bath if he did not scrub himself to her standards.

She certainly scrubbed Kenichi cleaner than he had been in weeks, the little boy struggling to escape her with cries of “Clean already! No more bath!”

But finally, they were both clean. And when she dressed again, she put on the silk kimono she had worn the night she and Kenshin had fled Kyoto. It had stayed folded in the tansu chest since Kenichi’s Omiyamairi, and it had looked and felt elegant and regal then. But now, she wondered if it would be enough.

She slipped her feet reluctantly into her old lacquered wooden zori. The straw zori Kenshin had made for her were so much more comfortable, and yet the impression she needed to make was much more important than the minor discomfort her feet would probably endure. 

Her stomach gave an uncomfortable flop at the thought of stepping into her father’s house again.

Outside the bathhouse, she noted that while everyone else looked freshly bathed, there was nothing to disguise their scruffiness. They had changed into clean clothing, but it was simple, plain, and well-worn. She found herself straightening the collar of Enishi’s kimono and brushing Kenshin’s hair out of his eyes.

She left Hiko-san alone, though she did wish she had urged him to bring his stunning red kimono.

When she reached up to attempt to smooth Enishi’s hair down - when had he grown taller than her? - he stepped back and said, “I think this is as pretty as any of us are going to get, Neechan.”

“We haven’t seen Otousan in years.” She couldn’t manage to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “I just want him to see that we’re doing well. Don’t you see that?”

“I imagine he’ll be much more concerned with the fact that his children have come home,” Hiko-san interjected dryly. “Or perhaps that he has a grandson and a son-in-law.”

Tomoe’s stomach gave another sickening lurch.

A distinct look of discomfort flitted across Kenshin’s face, but he quickly schooled his expression into something more vaguely neutral.

It didn’t help quell Tomoe’s nerves in the slightest. 

The afternoon sun hung low in the sky by the time they reached the samurai district of Musashino. Lime-washed earthen walls, topped with slanting tiles, lined the narrow, cobblestone streets. Other than the clipping of Tomoe’s lacquered zori against the stones, the neighborhood seemed far too quiet.

“Is everything so closed-in in this city?” Hiko-san grumbled, looking warily around at the narrow, walled-in street. “I keep feeling as though I have to hold my elbows in to stop from scraping the walls on both sides.”

“Be careful!” Kenichi admonished cheerfully.

“You’ll get used to it,” Tomoe said, perhaps a bit more quickly than she should have. 

They crossed a small bridge and walked a little further down the narrow streets. Her heart thudded once, twice, in her chest, and then they stood in front of a wooden gate with a peaked, tile roof. No different than any other wooden gate in Musashino, and yet...

“We’re here,” she said through a suddenly dry mouth.

No one moved.

“Oh, for…” Hiko-san came forward with an irritable shake of his head and pounded three times on the door with his fist. 

“We’re not breaking into the place, Shishou,” Kenshin said mildly. 

“We’re not standing around for hours outside of it either,” Hiko-san retorted, but he did step back to leave Tomoe at the front of their group.

Abruptly Enishi licked his hand and attempted to smooth down his hair. His other hand had balled into a fist.

The door creaked open. A middle-aged woman clad in a simple brown kimono, sleeves tied back with a cord and apron tied under her obi, with a kerchief in her hair, peered out at them.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Tomoe-chan! Enishi-kun! You’re home!” She looked up and down the length of Enishi. “And you’ve gotten so tall.”

“Otetsudai-san.” Tomoe bowed, feeling somewhat relieved to see the housekeeper’s familiar face even as her heart hammered in her chest at the thought of seeing her father. “Please forgive us for the unexpected intrusion.”

“Unexpected intrusion?” Otetsudai-san backed up several steps and bowed much lower than Tomoe had, before beckoning everyone inside and closing the gate behind them.

The house looked the same as it always had. The tiled roof sloped gently downward from its high, crested peak to hang over the engawa that surrounded the perimeter of the building. The gabled front entrance, so rarely used, still maintained an imposing facade. The open space around the house was small, but neatly kept. Tomoe noted the rock garden just beside the house, its stone lantern slightly mossier than it had been the last time she had seen it. 

The shoji connected to what Tomoe knew to be her father’s study slid open, and Tomoe’s breath caught in her chest.

Her father stepped out onto the engawa.

Her first thought was that he looked much older than she remembered - certainly more than four years’ worth. His hair had gone very grey, and his face seemed to be more drawn and lined even at this distance. A pair of familiar, round-lensed spectacles perched on the end of his long nose, and he wore his customary immaculate black kimono and striped hakama as she had always remembered him doing.

“Otousan,” she murmured, her throat tight and her heart thudding.

“Otousan,” Enishi said beside her, his voice sounding no less steady.

Yukishiro Takeshi’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. If he were surprised - or perhaps pleased - to see them, Tomoe couldn’t yet tell. 

“Tomoe. Enishi.” His voice was just as mild as she remembered it. “You’ve brought guests.”

Otetsudai-san bowed to the group of them, then turned and bowed much lower to Otousan. “I’ll make tea, Yukishiro-sama, and then I’ll run to the market for their dinner.” 

She hurried into the house, leaving her zori on the stepping stone, and Tomoe felt a sudden lurch of fear. Otetsudai-san might at least have been a calming, neutral presence in the house, but now she was going to be left to face her father alone.

Otousan’s gaze traveled over the group of them, landing on Hiko-san. His face betrayed nothing. 

“Welcome.” He bowed slightly. “I must apologize, as I did not realize I was to have guests this evening. Otetsudai-san will correct our error, and I hope that you’ll all join us for dinner.”

Next to Tomoe, Enishi stiffened but said nothing. 

Kenichi reached out up tugged Tomoe’s hand. “Kaachan, who that?” He waved in Otousan’s direction. “Who that, Kaachan?”

Tomoe closed her eyes. For a very long moment, she berated herself for having made the journey, for not having told her father anything beforehand, for not having prepared Kenichi or any of the rest of them for what they would be getting themselves into…

“That’s your Ojiisan,” she said as steadily as she could manage, her eyes finally opening again. “He’s Kaachan’s Touchan.”

“Kaachan Touchan!” Kenichi exclaimed. He patted his chest with a chubby little hand, then pulled off a charming little bow. “My name is Kenichi! Himura Kenichi!”

She took a deep breath and faced her father again, trembling in every inch of her frame. “Otousan, this is Kenichi.” She bit her lip. “My son.”

“Your son,” Otousan said softly.

Abruptly Kenshin stepped forward and bowed very low. “I’m Himura Kenshin.” His voice was steady, at least. “Kenichi is our son. Tomoe and I are married.” A beat, then, “I apologize that we had no way of telling you earlier.”

“Hiko Seijuro,” rumbled Hiko, stepping forward and inclining his head. At least he had his imposing physical presence to shield him somewhat. “The Thirteenth,” he added, gesturing toward the group of them. “Kenshin is my apprentice. The lot of them have been staying with me.” 

“On Mount Atago,” Enishi said abruptly. “Near Kyoto.”

The shoji to the dining area slid open, revealing Otetsudai-san kneeling on the tatami mat inside. “The tea is ready, Yukishiro-sama.”

“I apologize for keeping you waiting.” Otousan gestured toward the dining area. “Will you not do me the honor of joining me for tea?”

…  
…

While the others set down their traveling bags and slipped off their zori at the engawa, Hiko crouched down and began pulling off his boots. They took some time to remove, and so he was the last person to enter the house.

His first impression upon moving inside was of immaculate sparseness. 

The tatami mats on the floor were spotless and appeared perfectly new, though he supposed they might have been any age at all. The sliding fusuma throughout the house looked older, though they still gleamed as though just polished. They bore elaborate designs in vibrant paint and gilding on their delicate surfaces; an intricate waterfall cascaded from a high mountain on one while cranes soared over a dense forest on another.

There were alcoves set into the walls at irregular intervals, each containing an eye-catching display of some sort. One held a tall vase of carefully-arranged flowers, another a long hand-painted ukiyo-e scroll depicting a pillar of clouds rising high above a foaming sea. 

Past a fusuma that had been left cracked open, in an area that seemed to be demarcated as a study if the wall of books were anything to go by, was a full suit of samurai armor set in an alcove, the impressively-crested helmet with its leering mask seeming to stare at him as though guarding the house against his presence.

This was clearly the home of a wealthy man.

Hiko was forced to duck very abruptly upon entering the dining area of the house, as the runners set into the ceiling for the fusuma were much lower than his own height of more than six shaku. That was going to be a problem.

Judging by the flicker of a smile that crossed Kenshin’s lips, he had noticed. 

Otetsudai-san rose smoothly to her feet, then knelt again at the hearth and poured a cup of tea for everyone. She had also set out bowls of dried, shredded fish and senbei rice crackers.

“I’ll run to the market now, Yukishiro-sama,” she said before stepping out onto the engawa and sliding the shoji closed behind her.

Hiko settled comfortably into his usual cross-legged sitting position, then noted that the rest of them had descended into formal seiza postures. Except for Yukishiro, whose seiza seemed as natural and comfortable as standing at his ease.

Before anyone was forced to break the silence, to a number they all reached for their teacups and took very long drinks.

Yukishiro spoke first, setting his cup aside and resting his hands on his knees. “It seems my children have very involved stories to share.”

Kenichi looked at Tomoe, hesitated, then reached for a rice cracker. “Kenichi like stories.”

Tomoe looked at Hiko with an almost pleading expression in her eyes, as though she were begging him to say something so she did not have to. 

Hiko sighed and returned her look with one that clearly told her she would be forever in his debt, then spoke.

“Your daughter came to me shortly after the Kyoto fire a handful of years ago.” He kept his teacup in his hands as he spoke. “She and my apprentice found your son several months after he’d been mistreated by a band of onmitsu and left for dead. Your daughter’s been keeping house for us ever since then, and I’ve been training your son in my style of kenjutsu as well.”

All Yukishiro said to that was, “I see,” before focusing his unreadable gaze on Tomoe. “How did you and Himura-kun happen to meet?”

Tomoe looked from Hiko to Kenshin, then down at her own lap, before meeting Yukishiro’s eyes again.

“He… escorted me home one night,” she started to say, right as Enishi burst in with:

“She got lost. In Kyoto. She got lost in Kyoto.”

Kenshin stared down into his teacup. 

Hiko looked back and forth between the two siblings, hoping mightily that he would not have to step in and tell the real story. It was hardly his to tell, after all, but if he was the only one who could be counted upon to behave like an adult…

Kenichi crunched on another rice cracker and looked back and forth among the group seated around the hearth. 

“Everyone so quiet.” He tugged on his father’s sleeve. “Touchan, why everyone so quiet?”

“Because,” Kenshin said after a very long moment, “everyone is overwhelmed with emotion after not having seen each other for a long time.”

Tomoe seemed to be trying to muster her courage. Finally, she set her teacup down with a trembling hand and looked at her father.

“I met Kenshin in a pub one evening in Kyoto,” she said in an unsteady but insistent voice. “Just before I happened to see him confront a man in the street outside. I fainted, he brought me back to the inn where he was staying, and I remained there for some time.” She swallowed. “Until the fire, when he risked his life to get me out of the city.”

Yukishiro’s expression betrayed nothing, and Hiko was reminded forcibly of the inscrutable reticence Tomoe had displayed when she’d first come up the mountain. Though, when he compared the two, Yukishiro was certainly much more difficult to read. He’d been able to break through Tomoe’s facade with a few carefully-chosen questions and a disregard for her stilted politeness, but somehow he didn’t imagine her father to be quite so easy to crack.

“I feel like there is so much more to your stories,” Yukishiro said calmly, “and I should like to hear them in greater detail.”

“There’s no greater detail.” Enishi set his teacup down a bit too heavily, splashing some of its contents over the side. “There was a war. We were on a mountain. A secluded mountain, and not much happened, because we were up on a mountain during a war and-”

“You don’t need to cover for me,” Kenshin said abruptly. “If that’s what you’re doing.” He rose to his feet in one smooth motion and went to stand by the shoji, sliding it open and looking out at the rock garden.

Somewhere on the engawa, a furin chime clinked gently in the soft breeze.

“Your daughter met me because of my involvement at the very beginning of the war.” Kenshin rested his hand on the frame of the shoji. “Because I was working as a hitokiri for the Choshu Ishin Shishi, and because I killed the man that she was to marry.”

Hiko looked over at Tomoe and saw her eyes brimming with tears. He glanced over at Yukishiro to gauge his response, but saw nothing in that impassive face - the man might as well have been carved in marble or cast from bronze.

“I regret that,” Kenshin said softly. “I regret all of the pain and suffering I’ve caused for an untold number of people.” He turned, meeting Yukishiro’s eyes. “But I don’t regret falling in love with and marrying your daughter. I don’t regret having our son together.”

“Nor should you,” Hiko cut in, unable to keep his eyes from flickering between his idiot apprentice, Tomoe, and Tomoe’s stone-faced father. “You’ve made any number of stupid decisions in your life, and I’ve never been hesitant to say so, but your wife and son are not among them.”

He looked steadily at Yukishiro as though daring him to disagree.

“Kaachan?” Kenichi patted Tomoe’s hand and then climbed into her lap. “Kaachan, why sad? Why so sad, Kaachan?”

Tomoe visibly struggled to prevent her face from crumpling as she gathered Kenichi into her arms. “Kaachan’s trying to explain things to her father, that’s all,” she whispered in a very unsteady voice. “We all are.”

After a moment, Yukishiro said, “I do believe we have much more to discuss in greater detail, but at a later time. Otetsudai-san should be home soon, and we’ll all have dinner together.”

The housekeeper returned shortly after with a bucket of fresh fish and a basket of vegetables, and Kenshin seemed thankful enough for the interruption that he nearly leaped off the engawa and offered to carry both for her, even though she appeared to be handling herself just fine and would certainly know her way around her own kitchen.

Enishi was on his feet a moment later. “I’m going to stretch. Or walk. I’m going to stretch and walk.” He stepped hurriedly into his zori. “It’s been years since I’ve seen the old neighborhood.”

“I want walk too!” Kenichi exclaimed. “Kaachan, Kenichi want walk too!”

“That’s a good idea,” said Tomoe quickly, and almost before Hiko knew what was happening, the siblings had taken Kenichi outside with them and vanished into the street.

Leaving him there with Yukishiro.

He looked over at the older man for lack of anything better to do or say, studying him as deeply as he could. 

His long hair was iron-grey, with a few threads of shining black here and there, and had been slicked down and tied back at the crown of his head, ponytail hanging halfway down the length of his back. He wore a black kimono and hakama of black and grey stripes, the white of his nagajuban standing out in sharp contrast. A family crest was embroidered neatly on each breast of his kimono. His face was sharp and angular, with a long and straight nose and high cheekbones. A pair of spectacles with round lenses magnified his deep-set eyes, which had large and very dark pupils. 

The overall effect was one of startling severity. He looked every bit the sort of man who might have overseen the settling of the Shogun’s personal accounts, and who would never miss even the slightest discrepancy. Or perhaps a tutor who might be hired only by the most exceptional of scholars - the sort who might ask the kind of questions which had no answers to see what his pupils might come up with in their desperation.

Well, Hiko was not the sort of man who could be intimidated by severity or inscrutability. He had kept Yukishiro’s children safe, had given them a home and a purpose, had helped to rescue Tomoe from the Yaminobu and had begun teaching Enishi the secrets of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu against all tradition. The man had no complaint against him whatsoever.

If only he would _say_ something.

Kenshin appeared on the engawa then, holding a tray of what appeared to be two bowls of snack foods.

“Otetsudai-san didn’t need any help in the kitchen,” he offered by way of explanation, kneeling down into seiza and setting the tray before him. “Though she sent me away with some dried squid and more rice crackers.”

Yukishiro shifted his gaze onto him. “Do you know your way around a kitchen, Himura-kun?”

“Not well,” Kenshin admitted, “but I can manage. Nothing like Tomoe does, though.” The barest hint of a smile flickered across his face. “She can make even ochazuke taste good.”

“We never ate so well before she came to the house,” Hiko added with a brief snort of amusement. “As I’ve remarked to her several times.”

Yukishiro glanced Hiko’s way at that, but his expression was as unreadable as ever. Hiko felt a twinge of annoyance at that; this man seemed impenetrable.

They sat for a few moments in silence, in which the crunch of rice crackers and dried squid seemed abysmally loud, before Hiko could stand the oppressive quiet and the impassive face of their host not one second longer.

“Shogi,” he said, seemingly startling Kenshin. He turned to regard Yukishiro. “Your daughter likes to play shogi. We’ve passed many an evening in the winter playing it around the hearth.”

“She’s been playing since she was a child,” Yukishiro said, “though I imagine her skill level is without merit compared to yours.” He inclined his head slightly. “She had a poor teacher.”

Hiko narrowed his eyes at that. This suffocating politeness was becoming tiresome very quickly. Any man who had the skills of a master had little business being self-deprecating, after all.

“She says you taught her.” He leveled his gaze at Yukishiro. “Did she acquire her skills on her own, then?”

Yukishiro neatly sidestepped the question, instead asking, “Would you care for a game of shogi, then?”

In retrospect, Hiko supposed he ought to have known what he was getting himself into. Tomoe had never lost a match to him, and he was playing against the man who had taught her, but for lack of any better option, he accepted the game.

Which ended in less time than it had taken to set up the board.

Hiko stared down at the board, thunderstruck, and then back up into Yukishiro’s expressionless face. 

Kenshin blew out a breath and shook his head, but thankfully kept his damn mouth shut.

“Best two out of three, perhaps?” Yukishiro suggested mildly.

A voice at the back of Hiko’s mind briefly urged him to decline. He would lose, the voice insisted, and lose spectacularly in very short order, so why not spare himself the embarrassment? And yet he had never been the sort of man to back down from any challenge. His considerable genius had never failed to express itself in any task to which he set his full skill, so why should it be any different with a simple board game?

“Very well,” he said gruffly, and moved to reset the board.

His considerable genius lost him the game in five moves. 

“Games of the mind are best played with sake.” Yukishiro rested his hands against his knees. “Would you do me the honor of sharing some with me?”

At last, something he could reasonably do.

“Of course,” he replied with a slight smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever turned down an offer of sake in my life.”

Kenshin crunched on a rice cracker.

Yukishiro disappeared onto the engawa and reappeared a moment later, Otetsudai-san following behind and bearing a tray with a decently-sized sake carafe and three small cups. She set the tray down, murmured something about dinner being ready soon, and slid away just as quietly as she had come.

Yukishiro poured for all three of them and held up his cup. “To round three, then?”

“Three out of five,” Hiko agreed, suspecting very strongly that he would soon be drinking to round seventeen out of thirty-three. But perhaps Yukishiro would have drunk enough by that time to have begun making mistakes?

Unfortunately not.

“How do you keep doing that?” Hiko stared at the board in dumbstruck astonishment.

“You’ve traveled a long way.” Yukishiro moved to reset the board. “And are likely quite weary from your travels. I understand the Tokaido is rather strenuous in summertime.”

Yukishiro was trying to make excuses for him. The thought was irritating in a way Hiko had no means of describing.

“I’m the thirteenth master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu,” Hiko snapped. “A stroll through the countryside at a sedate pace is hardly strenuous.”

Tomoe, Enishi, and Kenichi returned just then, saving Yukishiro from having to respond. Shortly after that, Otetsudai-san announced that dinner was ready.

“We’ll play again tomorrow.” Yukishiro stood, shogi board in his hands, and disappeared into the study to put the game away.

Tomoe looked at Hiko with wide eyes. “You played shogi with my father?”

“He played shogi terribly with your father,” Kenshin corrected, pointedly ignoring the thunderous look Hiko shot in his direction.

Dinner was as awkward an affair as the rest of the evening had been; much of it was spent in silence as Yukishiro turned his unreadable gaze on each of them in turn. Tomoe and her brother seemed to wilt under it, Hiko met it stubbornly, and Kenshin seemed to be trying to give it directly back. Only Kenichi seemed unaffected by it, perhaps because he was growing visibly tired.

Finally, after she had cleared away the dinner dishes, Otetsudai-san produced a stack of futon from a closet and arranged the fusuma to make two sleeping areas. She ushered Kenshin, Tomoe, and Kenichi (who was now fast asleep) into one, leaving Enishi, Hiko, and Yukishiro himself in the other.

Hiko stared at the unfamiliar ceiling long after the lanterns had been blown out. And when he finally did force himself to sleep, he had a very strong suspicion that the others were still awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Okay, y'all wanted Papa Yukishiro, and HERE HE IS. And just a reminder that, nah, his name is not actually Takeshi, because in canon, THEY NEVER BOTHERED TO GIVE HIM A NAME. So I gave him one. SO THERE. And I let him keep his signature round glasses without also making him go insane and burn down his house (...yet?). 
> 
> As for OTETSUDAI-SAN, her name literally means 'Ms. Housekeeper.' Just like they called the Kohagiya innkeeper 'Ookami-san' (Ms. Landlady) and the midwife 'Onba-san' (Ms. Midwife). Because it would be considered RUDE to call her by her given name, especially since, being from the lower classes, she wouldn't have a family name (... yet). 
> 
> Hiko's comment about this clearly being the "home of a wealthy man." By EDO SAMURAI STANDARDS, the Yukishiro family are firmly middle class samurai. But to literally the rest of society, including samurai families who weren't specifically city samurai, this still puts them in the 1% of the population. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I've gotten some new readers (and some readers who aren't necessarily new, but are poking their heads up to say hi for the first time). Welcome to all of you! I owe lots of people responses, which I'll get to shortly.
> 
> But y'all... y'all... have you been following US Election news? (Indeed, I know many of my readers are not from the US, but this imperialist country tends to dominate news cycles, sorry about that, but here we are.) Anyway, this is the LIGHTEST I have felt in a while. Yeah, there's still... a lot of shit going on, but I feel like I can breathe for a few minutes. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Poke me, come say hi, squeal or vent in my inbox. I have the greatest, chattiest, often funniest readers, and I love the comments I get from everybody. Lay 'em on me, and I'll see you again, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.


	24. Recollection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Otousan looked at her for a moment. “Is Himura-kun who I suspect he is?”
> 
> Tomoe breathed a violently trembling sigh. “Yes.” 
> 
> Her father seemed to deflate at that, putting a hand on his writing desk and exhaling his own shaking breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EXCITING (AND USEFUL) GLOSSARY OF TERMS  
> Otetsudai-san : literally ‘Ms. Housekeeper’  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Fusuma : sliding room dividers, often painted or decorated. Different from shoji, which are used around the perimeter of a house, to open it to the outside  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Seiza : traditional Japanese way of sitting on the knees  
> Daimyo : feudal lords who served the Shogun  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Daisho: long sword (katana) and short sword (wakizashi) paired together

**Founding year of Meiji  
(August 1868)**

When Otetsudai-san returned the next morning, Tomoe decided to assist her with the preparations for breakfast. 

She told herself that it was not because she was running away from her father.

The kitchen - and she had nearly forgotten just how spacious it was after years on Mount Atago - had been rearranged exactly to the housekeeper’s liking, and Tomoe had the uncomfortable sensation of feeling like a guest in what used to be their shared space. 

“Yukishiro-sama generally prefers simple ochazuke or porridge for breakfast,” Otetsudai-san explained, as if Tomoe might have forgotten what she had served her family for years. “But since you’ve brought guests home, I thought something a little more special would be appropriate.”

Which would explain the buckets of fresh salmon and tofu she had arrived with.

She directed Tomoe to prepare the miso soup while she rinsed a portion of rice and put it on to boil. Once that was underway, she turned her attention to grilling the salmon.

“It’s good that you’re home, Tomoe-chan.” She spoke with her back to Tomoe, her attention on the stove. “Yukishiro-sama forgets to eat sometimes, despite my reminders. I think you’ll do a much better job at keeping him consistent.”

Tomoe felt a pang of guilt at that. Not only did it remind her of how selfishly she had acted in leaving for Kyoto in the first place, but it made her feel even more selfish for not telling her father how long she planned to stay in Tokyo.

Even she wasn’t entirely sure how long that would be.

“He looks so much older than he did before I left,” she murmured, setting a cover on the soup pot. “I don’t think he was ever terribly good at looking after himself, but…”

She trailed off, unsure she wanted to finish either the sentence or the thought.

“This is true, but I do believe Yukishiro-sama has been lonely.” Otetsudai-san began chopping a fat daikon radish. “Some of the neighbors said such terrible things after-” She clapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head. 

Tomoe began chopping the block of tofu with hands that trembled slightly. She fought the sudden anger that rose in her chest.

“I can’t imagine they said anything more terrible about him than they said about me,” she said in a clipped voice. “When they either thought I couldn’t hear them, or simply didn’t care whether I did.”

It was one thing to speak ill of her, she thought angrily as she cut the tofu block into neat pieces; she had made her own foolish mistakes and others had paid the price for them. But to speak ill of her father for things he had not done was unforgivable.

“Yukishiro-sama is a proud man.” Otetsudai-san set the knife down and sighed. “I don’t think he paid much mind to what the neighbors said about him, but when they spoke ill of his children…”

She shook her head and turned her attention back to preparing the daikon, and before long, it was simmering on the stovetop. 

“I apologize, Tomoe-chan,” she murmured. “Your return is a happy occasion, and we should let it remain so.”

“I should be the one apologizing.” Tomoe dumped the tofu into the simmering broth and set the lid back on the pot. “I’ve brought him so much to deal with, and no warning, and I know he’s terribly disappointed in me.”

He would never show it, of course, but he could hardly feel otherwise.

…  
…

Breakfast was a much more elaborate - and quiet - affair than they ever had on Mount Atago, and Hiko would have preferred their customary rice porridge or ochazuke around their familiar hearth. At least there, no one would have felt the need to mask their feelings or painstakingly choose the few words they spoke.

He had no patience for the elaborate nature of social interaction that people insisted on practicing. If a man couldn’t say what he meant, then there was no point in speaking to him. And if it had not been for the fact that he felt responsible for looking after the rest of them, he would have turned and headed straight back to Mount Atago before the sun had risen that morning. 

Once the breakfast dishes had been cleared away, Kenichi wasted no time in dashing off toward the area of the house that served as Yukishiro’s study. The elaborately painted fusuma had been left open just far enough for a little boy to slip through.

Hiko followed him, hitting his head on the fusuma runner and biting back a curse as the stars danced before his eyes. He scooped Kenichi up an instant before the boy had put his hands on the displayed samurai armor.

“No, Jiji!” Kenichi flailed his chubby little hands toward the armor. “I want to touch! Kenichi want to touch!”

“I highly doubt your Ojiisan wants finger marks on his antiques,” Hiko replied dryly, hefting his grandson in his arms and taking a step back from the armor. “Besides, it looks better from up here.”

Kenichi stretched his arm out, reaching for the shining crest on the helmet. “I want to touch!”

Hiko took another step back, keeping the armor safely out of Kenichi’s reach. “You may _look,_ bozu.”

“I don’t want to _look_!” Kenichi wailed. “I want to _touch!_ ”

“Do you like it?” The fusuma slid open completely, revealing Yukishiro, who stepped into the room without at all having to concern himself with hitting his head on the runner.

Abruptly Kenichi stopped wailing. “Kenichi like. Kenichi want to _touch._ ”

“I barely touch it myself.” Yukishiro clasped his hands loosely behind his back. “It belonged to my great-grandfather, Yukishiro Takenori.” He studied the armor for a moment, then glanced at Kenichi. “It’s very old, Kenichi-kun.”

“Older than Kenichi?” Kenichi frowned. “Kenichi is three.”

Hiko peered closely at the armor, noting a scored line along several of the squares of lacquered leather that made up the left sleeve. Decades of careful polishing had disguised it, but the marks of combat could still be distinguished by a trained eye.

“This saw battle,” he murmured. “Long ago.”

“The Ueda Rebellion,” Yukishiro explained. “Long before any of us came into this world.” He glanced at Kenichi. “Including you, Kenichi-kun.”

“Kenichi is three,” the boy repeated. “But Jiji is very old.”

“Everything seems old when you’re only three,” Hiko grumbled. “Though now that you mention it, how old do you think my cloak is?”

“Three!” Kenichi said cheerfully.

“More like three hundred, bozu.” He couldn’t help but suppress a laugh, however.

Yukishiro turned his gaze on the cloak, his eyes suddenly sharp through the glare of his polished spectacles. 

“A remarkably well-preserved heirloom,” he said, and Hiko thought he could hear a hint of appreciation in the man’s voice.

“It’s the emblem of the style.” Hiko turned to regard Yukishiro. “Every subsequent master since the days of the Sengoku era has worn it. It restrains the power of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu in peacetime.”

As well as constantly reminding its wearer of the price of such power, he thought as he shifted Kenichi in his arms.

“Ah.” Yukishiro waited a beat, then, “So you intend to pass this onto Himura-kun?”

The altogether ridiculous image of Kenshin wearing the massively weighted and countersprung cloak came into his mind just long enough for him to realize how unsuited his idiot apprentice would be to wear it. The problem of the succession of the style, however, was much more sobering, and so he chose to take refuge in mockery.

“Perhaps one day,” he snorted. “I keep hoping he’ll grow into it, but he’s taking his time.”

“Jiji, I want to run.” Kenichi tapped Hiko impatiently on the shoulder with his tiny hands. “Kenichi want to run now.”

“Not in the house, bozu,” Hiko admonished him as he set him down on the tatami. “Go out on the engawa.”

…  
…

Kenichi hurried past as Tomoe approached her father and Hiko-san with a tea tray in her hands. She kept the tray steady with some effort; her heart was beating rapidly as she tried to prepare herself for the conversation she knew she needed to have with him. 

Hiko-san met her eyes, then looked down pointedly at the tea tray, which bore only two cups. “I’ll just go and make sure the boy doesn’t run right off the edge of the engawa, shall I?” he asked, and Tomoe nodded gratefully. 

The smirk he gave her before leaving seemed to acknowledge her gratitude, and when he had left, she set down the tray beside the armor.

“I thought we should talk,” she said, admonishing herself as she did so for not having said something more substantial. She had never been able to avoid clumsiness when speaking to her father…

Otousan slid the fusuma closed and knelt seiza on the flat cushion in front of his writing desk. “I was wondering when you might approach me.”

He kept his voice very low, perhaps already realizing that Hiko-san would not play along with the illusion of privacy customarily granted to a samurai household.

“There was never a good time to say any of it,” she blurted, and before she could think better of having done so, she rushed recklessly ahead.

“I couldn’t have told you anything about Kenshin during the war. I left everything vague in the letters I wrote you, and the Yaminobu still found me. And the longer I waited, the worse I knew it would be when I finally spoke to you again, and I don’t know how to set any of that right.”

Otousan looked at her for a moment. “Is Himura-kun who I suspect he is?”

Tomoe breathed a violently trembling sigh. “Yes.” 

Her father seemed to deflate at that, putting a hand on his writing desk and exhaling his own shaking breath. 

“The Yaminobu visited me some time ago,” he finally said. “They told me you were helping to hunt down this man.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I believed them. To be perfectly truthful, I don’t know what I believed, but…”

He fixed his gaze on her. “I am having trouble understanding this on any conceivable level, Daughter.”

She withered under that word as though it had been a physical blow. Crushing shame seemed to pour down on her, bowing her head and shoulders under unimaginable weight.

“I don’t know how to make you understand,” she whispered.

“I understand how devastating Akira-kun’s death was for you.” Otousan sat with that for a moment, then, “I fail to understand what changed.”

“I went to Kyoto intending to help the Yaminobu kill Kenshin,” Tomoe said, her voice hushed, praying that she could be quiet enough to prevent Kenichi from hearing any of this. “I had imagined him to be a bloodthirsty demon, but when I met him, he was just a boy.” She shook her head. “Just a boy, three years younger than I was, and when we were living at the inn, I came to realize that he wanted peace.”

“Peace through bloodshed?” Otousan asked simply.

“He witnessed bloodshed in his life from the time he was a child.” Her voice quavered slightly as she tried to summon courage to speak to her father as she had never spoken to him before. “And he asked for none of it. He saw farmers cut down by samurai for not giving over their last grains of rice.”

A slight quirk of Otousan’s brow encouraged Tomoe forward.

“He saw the slave caravan into which he was sold after his whole village died of cholera mercilessly slaughtered by bandits.” She took a breath. “No samurai came to his aid. The daimyo was the one who decided to sell him into slavery, though he’d considered simply murdering him instead.”

Otousan said nothing to that, but he hadn’t cut Tomoe off either. 

“Only Hiko-san ever lifted a finger to help him.” The words tumbled out of her in a rush of frustration and anger and confused betrayal. “The samurai are the ones who were supposed to protect people. To maintain order and dispense justice. But the men in Kenshin’s village could either choose to starve to death from giving all their harvests over to the daimyo or be cut down in their tracks by his samurai.”

She felt a sob rise in her chest. “He wanted to end that. He wanted to end starvation and slavery. And after hearing his story, I wanted the same.”

For a long, painful moment, her father said nothing. His gaze had dropped into his lap and he seemed to be studying his hands, and Tomoe had no idea of what to do.

Finally, quietly, he said, “Himura-kun told you these things?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I never knew - I could never have imagined anything so horrible.” She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “But what nearly happened at Suo-Oshima was worse.”

“The Second Choshu Expedition?” Otousan looked up at her. The slightest of frowns creased his mouth. “The Shogun sent the military there to quell the rebellion.”

“They were going to bombard the town.” Tomoe’s eyes were closed, the awful scenes that could have been - that would have been had her husband not gone back to the war - leering horrifically at her from inside her mind. “Shell it from the sea. A town of innocents, to frighten their opposition into surrender.” 

She shook her head again, trying to clear the images from her head. “Kenshin wouldn’t have gone back to the war if the Bakufu hadn’t tried to do that. He would have stayed on the mountain with us. But he went back to save those lives.”

The slight frown deepened. “And Himura-kun told you this as well?”

She nodded. Words had suddenly failed her.

He studied her for a moment, eyes sharp behind the polished glass of his spectacles. “How can you be certain of the truth of his words?”

“Because I know him.” She looked imploringly at her father, searching for understanding. “He is an honest and honorable man. The night he left, I could see the pain in his eyes when he said goodbye to me. That was when I gave him my first letter to send to you.”

She was babbling, rambling, but she could not stop. “I gave him my scarf to keep him safe. To remember me and Kenichi. He promised me that he would always come back, and I believed him.” She looked into her father’s eyes. “I believe him.” 

“You…” Otousan’s voice caught. He shook his head, and for the first time, Tomoe noticed that his fingers had clenched into the fabric of his hakama. “You’re in love with him.”

She suddenly felt terribly sorry for her poor father. 

How much could this have been turning his world upside down? He had lost so much in his life - his children, the siblings she had barely known; his wife, her mother - and now he was listening to his daughter spin a story of having fallen in love with the man who had overthrown his government.

“Yes.” She reached out a hand to gently touch his clenched fist. To relieve him of at least some of his unease. “I wouldn’t have chosen him if I weren’t.”

…  
…

Kenichi ran up and down the length of the engawa with the same boundless enthusiasm as the first ten or so times he had made the journey. He rounded the corner, disappearing toward the back of the house where the kitchen was situated (along with the well and a sizable private bath in a building that could never be described as a shed), only to reappear with a fiercely determined look on his face, tiny little feet pitter-pattering against the hard wood.

Kenshin felt oddly calm watching him. 

Out of all of them, his son was the only one who didn’t seem anxious or even particularly uncomfortable in the Yukishiro family home. He took the situation in cheerful stride, finding amusement where he could and otherwise making his own fun. 

Which was certainly more than Kenshin could say for anyone else.

Otetsudai-san had left out a tray of tea and then disappeared to do laundry or perhaps cook another elaborate meal or maybe just make herself scarce in the face of a sudden influx of company.

Enishi had made himself scarce too, muttering something about persimmons and then disappearing into the neighborhood, and Tomoe was otherwise occupied in what seemed like a potentially very emotionally taxing conversation.

He wondered if she had any second thoughts about their rustic life on Mount Atago. She had never complained about it - never to him, anyway - but now that she had returned to the elegant trappings of a Tokyo samurai home…?

Now that she was rather forcibly reminded of just who she had married and what that really meant…?

“He’s fortunate that he doesn’t need much space to run around in.” Hiko sat next to Kenshin on the edge of the engawa, ostensibly helping to supervise Kenichi but with his eyes firmly on Kenshin. “Unlike myself. This place makes me feel caged-in.”

Kenshin glanced at him. “I know you don’t like the neighborhood walls. You’d much prefer a wall of trees.”

“Trees have the good sense not to grow in walls.” Hiko gave him a sour glare in return. “And I generally have the good sense to avoid large groups of people and the penchant they have for boxing themselves into tiny, uncomfortable areas.” He scowled. “I’ve hit my head on those stupid fusuma runners twice already.”

Kenshin shrugged. “Some of us had the good sense to remain the correct height for all types of buildings.”

Kenichi zoomed past them, weaving around both of them and skidding around the corner again.

“And yet you’re no more comfortable in this place than I am.” Hiko gave him a penetrating look, as though daring him to disagree.

For a moment, and mostly out of respect for his wife, Kenshin considered disagreeing anyway. After all, this was her childhood home, and they were guests. 

And yet…

“I’m out of place,” he said simply. 

“You and I both, boy,” his shishou grunted. “This house feels like some sort of museum.” He considered for a moment, his eyes darkening. “Or a mausoleum, perhaps.”

“They all live this way though.” Kenshin watched as Kenichi sped by once more. “City samurai.” A beat, then, “The samurai districts looked much the same in Kyoto. Cobblestone streets. Locked gates. High walls.”

He had become terribly familiar with the layout of the samurai districts over the years…

“Untouchable,” he murmured.

“Well, naturally.” Hiko’s voice had taken on a familiar sardonic tone. “Couldn’t have the common people intruding, after all. Or invading.” He snorted. “So brave when facing down one or two unarmed peasants, and so cowardly in the midst of enough people to overwhelm them.”

Kenichi ran toward them, stumbled to an awkward stop, and tugged at Kenshin’s sleeve. “Touchan, look.” 

He pointed a chubby little finger to the tidy rock garden just beyond the engawa. It had been meticulously raked, neat tracks encircling a small stone lantern and several mossy stones. Kenshin wondered if Yukishiro-san maintained the garden himself or if he hired a gardener. 

“I want to touch,” Kenichi supplied helpfully.

“Also untouchable.” Kenshin shook his head. “It’s for looking, not touching.”

Kenichi screwed up his face at that and balled his tiny hands against his hips. “Kenichi not touch _anything_!”

“That’s just the kind of house this is, bozu,” Hiko replied with a sympathetic sigh. “But you can look as much as you’d like.”

…  
…

“Chosen him?” Otousan echoed, and there was a strange sort of hollowness in his tone now. “I can see, Daughter, that in losing Akira-kun, your grief drove you to make hasty decisions. I can see that in talking with Himura-kun, you would have come to a more rational understanding of him.”

Abruptly he rose from his seiza position and took a few steps toward the books that lined one wall of the study, though he turned and looked down at Tomoe.

“But I fail to understand how you came to the decision to marry him.” Very quietly, he added, “Without consent. Or even explanation.”

Tomoe willed herself not to let her head hang, not to let her eyes drop to her lap. The guilt she felt was over waiting so long to see her father and tell him what had happened, not over her decision to marry Kenshin. Certainly not for Kenichi.

“He asked me,” she said quietly. “And I accepted.”

She knew her father would not be satisfied with so brief an explanation, but that was not the only reason she went on. She had tortured herself for weeks after arriving at Hiko-san’s house, thinking that all the words her family’s neighbors had whispered about her had been true. That she was a cold, unfeeling, faithless woman for whom nothing - and no man - would ever be good enough. That she did not deserve love, or happiness, because she could not feel it.

But Kenshin had shown her that none of it was true. He had loved her, he had accepted her, he had forgiven her, and he had taught her to feel the happiness she had never believed herself capable of. And she owed it to him to tell her father the entire and absolute truth.

“Katsura-san - Kenshin’s superior,” she added, for her father’s benefit. “He wanted -”

“Katsura-san,” Otousan repeated, then his eyes widened slightly. “Katsura Kogoro? The man who drafted the Five Charter Oath? That was Himura-kun’s superior?”

Tomoe’s eyes widened as well as the understanding of what she had said struck her. 

During her time in Kyoto, she had known Katsura-san only as Kenshin’s superior. To her, Katsura-san had merely been the man with whom Kenshin and the other revolutionaries at the Kohagiya had met regularly and who had given Kenshin his instructions.

His _targets_ , a quiet voice in her head reminded her, and she felt herself go slightly cold.

But now that the revolution had been won, now that the war was over and the rebel insurgency was now the Imperial army, Katsura-san had become so much more than the ideological leader of the rebellion. He had become the architect of the new government. He had become the man at whose word the country would move and shift, grow and change. And everyone now knew his name.

It had been so easy to live up on Mount Atago, never having to consider any of this.

“Yes,” she said quietly, in answer to her father’s question. “Kenshin once told me that Katsura-san personally selected him from among the Kiheitai.”

“The rebel army?” A slight frown creased Otousan’s mouth. “You threw your lot in very deeply with these men, Daughter.”

“Only with Kenshin.” Tomoe’s eyebrows knit. “I barely spoke to any of the others. I was an innkeeper’s assistant, not a military strategist.”

“Had the inn been raided,” Otousan said evenly, “you would have been arrested along with everyone else.”

“It was raided.” 

The terror she had felt that night, and the numb hopelessness which had followed during their headlong flight from the city, seemed to flood back into her heart as though it had been yesterday. 

“And they didn’t arrest anyone; they killed them all. The only reason I survived was because I was with Kenshin that night.”

Her father simply did not understand how terribly _wrong_ the Bakufu had been. How misguided everything had become, how corrupted, how poisonous, how ugly. How close she herself had come to death, and how the man she had once sworn vengeance against had somehow become the only man who could possibly have saved her.

In more ways than one...

“Katsura-san wanted us to flee to Otsu, after the great fire in Kyoto. When it seemed like the cause was lost. He wanted Kenshin to hide there with me, disguised as a farmer and his wife.” The ghost of a sad smile crossed her face at the memory. “But Kenshin said he wanted to give me more than just the illusion of a marriage. He said he would give me everything he had, for as long as he had it to give.”

“And so you went to live with Himura-kun and his shishou on a remote mountain?” A look of real pain flickered across Otousan’s eyes, and Tomoe felt regret and guilt slide like a knife between her ribs to pierce her heart. “Why did you not come home instead?”

“It was too dangerous to travel.” She wanted to reach out her hand, to lay it gently on her father’s hand and let that simple touch convey her sorrow at his pain, but that had never been their way.

Had never been _his_ way.

“Enishi only survived because the Yaminobu brought him to Otsu.” Her eyes clouded. “And when they beat him and abandoned him, he nearly died. He would have died if he hadn’t found me.” Her father stiffened at that. “And even hiding up on the mountain, the Yaminobu still managed to track us down and kidnap me and Kenichi.”

“I would assume,” Otousan said slowly, as if he were weighing each word, “that the Yaminobu are all dead now.”

Tomoe recalled how she had watched the end of Tatsumi’s cruel life. It had been abrupt, decisive, and horrifically brutal, and he had deserved it entirely. Even now, she felt no shame in the satisfaction she had taken in watching it. 

In watching her husband kill the man who had done his best to hurt and destroy her family.

“Yes,” she replied simply.

…  
…

After strolling the length of the small yard back and forth, and back and forth yet again, Kenichi abruptly lost interest and took to drawing in the dirt with a stick. Kenshin returned to his seat on the engawa to watch him.

He wondered how long they would stay in Tokyo.

“I think this will be a very long few weeks,” Kenshin murmured to Hiko, who was drinking one of the cups of tea that had since gone cold. 

“It already feels like we’ve been here for weeks,” Hiko grumbled in return. “I don’t suppose you’d care to go in and assist your wife in explaining things to her father?”

Kenshin frowned. “What could I possibly say that he would want to hear?”

“Well,” Hiko replied with a cocked eyebrow, “you won’t know until you tell him, now will you?”

“You’re trying to get me in trouble, aren’t you?” Kenshin’s frown deepened. 

“You’ve never needed me to try to get you in trouble,” Hiko snapped. “You do well enough for yourself on that score without any help from me.”

While Kenshin did, in fact, realize that they were very likely only poking at each other because of their mutual discomfort with the situation, he couldn’t help but add:

“Perhaps Yukishiro-san would prefer that we stay here for a time. You can return to Mount Atago and finally get all the space in the house to yourself.”

Hiko’s glower intensified. “I’d barely have gotten back before you lot would be knocking on my door again.” He snorted, and perhaps there was a flicker of a smile in his eyes. “And besides, your son would be beside himself if I left him behind.”

Kenichi looked up from where he squatted in the dirt, his tiny brow furrowing. “Where Jiji going?”

“Nowhere, bozu.” Without leaving his seat, Hiko scooped him up with one arm and returned him to the engawa. “Not anytime soon, at least. Regrettably.”

Abruptly the shoji to the study opened and Yukishiro-san stepped out onto the engawa. Without pausing, he stepped into his zori and then left the courtyard, pulling the front gate shut behind him. He wore daisho at his waist.

Kenshin frowned. “Official business?” He glanced at Hiko. “Where could he be going?”

“Where he going?” Kenichi looked back and forth between Kenshin and Hiko. “Where Ojiisan going?”

Tomoe exited the study a moment later, in much less of a hurry and with a lost sort of look on her face.

“I think I’d like to sit out here a while,” she said softly, sinking down beside Kenshin.

Kenshin wrapped an arm around Tomoe’s waist and nudged her closer, leaning his head gently against hers.

“Did you come to any sort of understanding?”

“I don’t know.” She seemed to wilt, to sag against him, and her voice carried the same sort of tone. “It’s always been so hard to tell what he’s thinking.” She sighed. “But I don’t think so.”

A pointed and knowing glance passed between Hiko and Kenshin, and without a word, Hiko picked up Kenichi and strode away. Kenshin nodded his appreciation and shifted his attention back to his wife.

“What do you want to do?” He threaded his fingers with hers. “What do you need me to do?”

“This,” she said simply, her body curling against his. Her fingers tightened in his for a brief moment, then went limp with the rest of her. 

Enishi appeared at the top of the courtyard wall, wooden bucket in hand, before abruptly dropping to the ground and heading over to them.

Clearly his leaping skills had come a long way. 

“So who locks the gate at midday?” he said without preamble. “Did we always do that? I don’t have a key, Neechan. Do you?”

“I left it behind when I left for Kyoto.” Her voice sounded dull. “Otousan went out. I didn’t know he’d locked the gate.”

Enishi frowned. “I couldn’t find persimmons, but I found peaches.” He held out the bucket. “Want one?”

“Maybe later,” Kenshin demurred, while Tomoe merely shook her head.

“Okay, what happened?” Enishi set the bucket aside and sat on the engawa next to his sister. “And don’t tell me nothing happened, Neechan, because something clearly happened.”

“He’s so terribly disappointed in me,” came the quiet response. 

Enishi plucked a peach from the bucket and bit into it, juice overflowing and dribbling down his chin. “We’re here, aren’t we? We didn’t have to come.” He scowled. “He shouldn’t be that disappointed.”

“He called me ‘Daughter’.” Tomoe sounded hopeless.

Enishi winced. “Oh.”

The hour of the horse came and went, and Yukishiro-san still hadn’t returned. Otetsudai-san served lunch - everyone getting their own separate tray table, which they did not have on Mount Atago - and somehow it was even more awkward, eating a meal in the house without their host present.

“Where Ojiisan?” Kenichi asked, soup spoon clutched in his tiny fist. “Touchan, where Ojiisan go?”

Kenshin shook his head. “We don’t know yet.”

“Maybe that was enough visit for him,” Enishi muttered into his rice bowl. “Maybe seeing us for one night was all he needed, which means we can go now.”

Tomoe stared very hard into her own bowl. “He wouldn’t have just run away like that.” Her voice was quiet and brittle. “Not from his own house.”

“Perhaps he thought we’d take the hint,” Hiko snorted, drinking the last of his soup at a gulp and setting the bowl down. “He doesn’t seem the sort of man to plainly state what he wants, after all.”

Tomoe’s head dipped lower.

…  
…

It was so very strange to sit there in her father’s house, eating her father’s food, being attended to by her father’s housekeeper, and yet to not even know where her father was. And worse yet was to know that the last words her father had spoken to her had been in disappointment.

He had left because of her.

The old shame crashed down over her again, the whispered words of the women in the Musashino district echoing in her ears as they had done all those years ago. Whispers loud enough to hear plainly, whether because the houses were close together and the walls thin, or because the whisperers did not care if they were overheard. The old weight bowed her head and her shoulders, the knowledge that she was flawed, that she would never be good enough, that she was a disgrace and a disappointment and a burden…

The rice bowl sat heavily in her hand, her chopsticks forgotten in the other, her appetite nowhere to be found. 

“Kaachan, why sad?” Kenichi snuggled up against her, resting his little head in her lap. “Why sad now, Kaachan?”

A flood of tears threatened to spill over at her son’s simple words. Her son, and Kenshin’s son, the product of a love that her father could not understand.

It was very hard to master herself, to hold back the despair and the shame and the tears. But for her son’s sake, she did.

“Kaachan’s all right,” she said as convincingly as she could manage. “Kaachan loves you.”

The afternoon somehow became the early evening, and still her father hadn’t returned. Tomoe disappeared into the kitchen to help Otetsudai-san grill the eel and simmer the vegetables in a flavorful oden broth.

“Yukishiro-sama disappears sometimes.” Otetsudai-san handed Tomoe two stacked tray tables, loaded with the evening’s meal, then followed her into the dining area carrying the other three. “Usually not for this long, but… I’ll keep his dinner warm for him.”

She disappeared back into the kitchen to retrieve the rice bucket. 

“What’d I say?” Enishi scowled. “He got sick of us. ”

Tomoe set down her brother’s tray table with a bit more firmness than might have been called for. “He’s probably at some sort of meeting,” she said, knowing full well that she was trying to convince herself more than Enishi. “He’ll be back.”

Kenshin frowned, but whatever he might have been thinking, he kept it to himself.

Otetsudai-san returned with the rice bucket, knelt down next to Hiko-san, and served him a very generous portion of rice. 

“You seem like a man who appreciates a good meal,” she said cheerfully, passing him the bowl and then moving to fill the next one.

“I do,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “But I might enjoy it more if I knew where my host was.”

Otetsudai-san passed Kenshin a bowl of rice, then moved on to Enishi. 

“We never had to ask where he was when we lived here,” Enishi grumbled, setting his bowl down on the tray table. “He was always in his study.”

“Whatever official function he went to is running longer than usual,” Tomoe insisted. “Or they’re having drinks afterward. That used to happen all the time at the Kohagiya.”

“Yukishiro-sama has no official functions to attend.” Otetsudai-san handed Kenichi his rice bowl, then smiled when the boy offered a very happy thanks.

“No?” Tomoe looked up at her, slightly confused. “Doesn’t he have any business to attend to?”

“For whom?” Otetsudai-san handed Tomoe her rice bowl, then folded her hands in her lap and looked at her.

Enishi scowled. “For the Sho… oh.” His chopsticks hung frozen over his rice bowl. 

Tomoe realized with a shock that her father no longer had any official business at all. That he was no longer a retainer to the Shogun, because there was no longer a Shogun. There was no longer a Tokugawa Bakufu. There was no longer any semblance of the government the country had had for hundreds of years.

Otetsudai-san rose to her feet. “They let all of the Shogun’s retainers go. All five thousand of them.” She bowed and quickly left the room, disappearing into the kitchen.

“Let them…”

A ball of ice suddenly dropped into Tomoe’s stomach. Had her father lost his livelihood? Was he going to be forced out of his home? Were they eating the last of the rice he had been given from his annual stipend?

Her rapidly spiraling thoughts were cut off by a sharp rap at the front gate. 

“Don’t bother,” she said, much more loudly than was probably necessary, as Otetsudai-san appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I’ll go and see who it is.”

She rose on legs that felt numb and nerveless, slid unfeeling feet into her wooden zori on the engawa, and stumbled the few steps to the gate as her mind and heart roiled. It couldn’t have been her father, she thought dully; he could not have locked the gate to begin with unless he’d brought his key. 

But then who…?

A young girl of perhaps seven summers stood outside in the street, bouncing on her heels, hands clasped behind her back. Her summery light-pink kimono was embroidered with cherry blossoms and her hair was gathered up into a ponytail by a red ribbon that had been tied into a floppy bow.

“Good evening, Oneesan,” she said cheerfully, sketching a quick bow. “I’m here to tell you that Yukishiro-ojiisan isn’t feeling very well and so will be spending tonight at our house.”

Tomoe took a step back, reeling slightly. “I…” 

She had never seen this little girl in her life; why was she calling her father Ojiisan? When had her father become well-acquainted enough with anyone else to be comfortable spending the night in a different house? Particularly without telling any of them, even Otetsudai-san? Nothing seemed to be making sense at all.

“What is your name?” she finally managed to ask.

“Oh, Kaoru-chan.” Otetsudai-san appeared behind Tomoe, and this so-named Kaoru-chan bowed quickly in greeting. “Is Yukishiro-sama with your father then?”

Kaoru bobbed her head once. “Yes, Otetsudai-san.”

“Yukishiro-sama has become well-acquainted with the Kamiya family these past several years,” Otetsudai-san murmured.

“Yep!” Kaoru agreed. “Well, I just wanted to let you know. Bye now!” She turned to go, but Tomoe found her voice once more.

“Wait!” 

She hurried forward, her body moving before her thoughts had the chance to catch up with her. With the decision she was already acting upon before having fully made it.

“I’ll go with you,” she said to Kaoru. Turning to the rest of them, she met Kenshin’s eyes. “You don’t have to wait for me. I want to see my father.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kaoru looked up at her. “Did you want to spend the night too?”

“I… no.” Tomoe shook her head. The little girl was very earnest and charmingly adorable in the way her brother had not been at that age. “Thank you.”

Where were her manners? 

“My name is Tomoe, by the way.” She bowed lightly, then hurried to keep up with the girl. “I used to live here, but I just arrived back here yesterday. I’ve been away for several years.”

“Oh, I know.” Kaoru practically skipped alongside her. “You’re Yukishiro-ojiisan’s daughter. You married Himura Battousai-san and have a little boy named Kenichi.” She beamed up at her. “I just learned those last bits today though.”

Tomoe’s mouth opened and closed a few times, but no coherent thoughts managed to survive the journey from her mind to her lips long enough to be translated into sound.

Soon enough, they arrived at the gate of a house only a few streets distant from her father’s house. The gate itself was the same simple wooden affair that fronted every other house in the district, but hanging beside it was a sign - newly-carved, by the look of it - which read ‘Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Kenjutsu Dojo.’

Kaoru must have noticed Tomoe examining the sign. “My father just started our school a few months ago, but he tore down part of the house before he went away to fight in the war so he could build our dojo.” She took a breath. “So that he could start our school, of course.”

“I see.” Kaoru’s boundless energy made Tomoe smile and, for the briefest of moments, long for a daughter as well as a son. “My husband just recently came back from the war as well. I’m sure your father is every bit as glad as he is that the war is over.”

“Yep!” Kaoru nodded. “He had wanted to start a school before the war, but he said now that all of the Shogun’s retainers have been let go, he finally has the time to do it right.” She bounced on her heels, smiling proudly. “And I’m learning too.”

Tomoe was reminded with a wrench that her father had been relieved of his position. And, unlike Kamiya-san, who had smoothly transitioned into another means of supporting his family, her father had nothing with which to sustain himself. 

She thought furiously. How long would he be able to last? Might she be able to convince Hiko-san to let him come to live with them on Mount Atago? Would he even agree to go? And what about Otetsudai-san, who had served him faithfully for nearly thirteen years? Would their lives all be thrown into upheaval because the Bakufu had been dismantled? Was that the price to be paid for safeguarding the lives of the people Kenshin had hoped to protect?

Tomoe seized on the last thing Kaoru had said in an attempt to save herself from drowning in these thoughts. It was, after all, entirely unheard of. “You’re learning kenjutsu?”

“I’m learning to protect life!” Kaoru said enthusiastically, then a frown flickered briefly across her face. “Well, right now I’m learning to swing a shinai, but I’ll get to the other part soon.” She perked up again. “Oh, and my father and Yukishiro-ojiisan are writing a book about our style too!”

As Kaoru opened the gate and led her through it, Tomoe staggered again under the realization that so much had gone on while she had been up on Mount Atago. That life had not stood still outside of the bubble in which she had lived, but had marched on in ways she could not have imagined. 

“I’ll have to ask him about it,” she murmured, right as Kaoru took a deep breath and announced:

“I’m home! And I’ve brought Yukishiro-ojiisan’s daughter with me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Some of you have been asking whether or not Kaoru might appear. Well, heeeeere's Kaoru! And where there's (7 year old) Kaoru, there's Koshijiro as well, so you'll meet the entire Kamiya family in the next chapter. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Some historical notes? That's why you're in this section, right? Yeah, Katsura Kogoro totally wrote the Five Charter Oath. It's considered the first Japanese constitution, and it's also super short (literally 5 sentences), so if you're inclined, you can google it and give it a read. SUPER PATRIOTIC JAPANESE WRITING AWAITS YOU IF YOU CHOOSE TO READ, such as "All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state." There, I just gave you the second aim of the Oath.
> 
> Anyway, imagine your daughter runs away, comes back married to the radical terrorist who not only killed her fiance but helped destabilize and bring down the government, and then you find out said radical terrorist (now considered a war hero, by dint of being on the winning side) personally carried out assassinations (uh... assignments) for the new Prime Minister/President.
> 
> YOU MIGHT ALSO RUN AWAY TO YOUR FRIEND'S HOUSE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DEAL. (And probably get super shit-faced drunk, or is that just how I roll?)
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Anyway, fam, LAY YOUR COMMENTS ON ME! I enjoy each and every comment I get, I reread them often, and they never fail to leave huge, cheesy grins on my face. See you in two Sundays, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!


	25. Epiphany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abruptly one of the shoji slid open, and Kenshin turned slightly to see Enishi scowling down at them.
> 
> “I know it doesn’t affect either of you,” he said sourly, “but you’re still sitting in my father’s house, eating his food that he has no way of paying for now.”
> 
> Kenichi set his stick down and looked up curiously.
> 
> “But you don’t care about most people,” Enishi continued, pointing to Hiko and Kenshin in turn, “and you were a hitokiri for the winning side, so it’s all good, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY OF USEFUL TERMS  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Otetsudai-san : literally ‘Ms. Housekeeper’  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Ochazuke : green tea poured over rice. A popular breakfast or snack  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Fusuma : sliding room dividers, often painted or decorated. Different from shoji, which are used around the perimeter of a house, to open it to the outside  
> Amida Butsu : the principle Buddha in Japanese Buddhism  
> Butsudan : Buddhist family altar  
> Bushido : the code of honor and morals developed by the samurai

**Founding year of Meiji  
(a few moments later)**

When it became clear that Tomoe was indeed serious about going to see her father alone, Kenshin reluctantly returned to the dining space to resume his meal.

“When Kaachan come back?” Kenichi asked, mouth smeared with tare sauce from the grilled eel and chopsticks held tightly in his little fist.

“We don’t know yet.” Kenshin considered wiping his son’s face clean, but as the boy had only started eating, there didn’t seem much point. He’d get far messier, after all. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Kenichi frowned. “Kenichi not want ‘wait and see’.” All the same, he clumsily maneuvered another bite of eel into his mouth. His chopstick skills lacked graceful coordination, but he was improving.

“There’s nothing else for it, bozu.” Hiko dug into his second large bowl of rice. “I’m not about to go looking for Kaachan when she’s clearly fine.”

Judging by the look on Enishi’s face, he was clearly _not_ fine, but he was uncharacteristically silent as well, shoveling food into his mouth with grim purpose.

Kenshin poked at his rice. 

He wanted to follow his wife and figure out what exactly was going on. He wanted to not be sitting awkwardly in a meticulously clean, yet oddly uncomfortable house without either his wife or her own father present.

He ate another mouthful of eel instead. It was very good and it would be poor manners to let it go to waste.

Eventually Otetsudai-san cleared away the dishes, turned down Kenshin’s offer to help with the washing up, and then reappeared some time later to partition the house into sleeping areas and lay out the futon.

Kenshin sat out on the engawa, nursing a cup of tea while Kenichi drew in the dirt with a stick. 

“I’ve set aside Yukishiro-sama’s dinner, though if he doesn’t care to eat that, there’s enough rice for Tomoe-chan to make ochazuke,” Otetsudai-san explained. “The fire for the bath is lit, and so I’ll take my leave now. Good evening.” 

She bowed and left the courtyard, sliding the gate shut behind her. Kenshin wondered if she were relieved to get away from the unspoken, yet palpable tension in the house.

Probably.

“What are the odds she’s relieved to get away from here for the evening?” Hiko emerged from the house to sit beside Kenshin on the engawa. “The housekeeper, I mean. Not your wife.” 

“Not Kaachan,” Kenichi said seriously, though he didn’t look up from his dirt scribbles.

Hiko crossed his legs and opened his sake jug. “She probably lives in a cramped rowhouse with dozens of other people, crammed together with hardly any room to breathe, but something tells me she’s still glad to be there instead of here right now.”

Kenshin sighed, his shoulders slumping with the abrupt release of tension. 

“It was my wife’s choice to come here, and I have to honor that.” His gaze drifted to the gate, though Tomoe failed to miraculously appear. “But…”

“But this is her home, not yours.” Hiko poured two cups and offered one to Kenshin, who accepted it with a nod. “And Yukishiro is her father, not yours.”

Kenshin sat with that for a moment. 

“I didn’t know about the Shogun’s retainers.” He took a tentative sip of the sake. It tasted fine. “It makes sense. Katsura-san and Okubo-san and even Saigo Takamori-”

He had never quite forgiven Saigo for providing the names of the Ishin Shishi who had been executed in the First Choshu Expedition, even if he was, as Katsura had said, ‘trying to minimalize casualties.’

“- would want a fresh start of things. And yet…”

“And yet he’s an old man who now has to find a new livelihood.” Hiko tossed off his sake with barely a pause. “At least he’s a city samurai. He’ll have a handful of useful skills.” He snorted. “The ones out in the farmlands don’t know how to do anything but fight.”

“Perhaps they could farm.” Kenshin frowned into his sake cup. “After spending generations stealing the rice from the bowls of farmers, maybe they could actually try doing something useful now.”

He didn’t like the bitterness in his tone, and he attempted to wash it down with the last of the sake in his cup.

Hiko snorted again and refilled both cups. “They wouldn’t be good for much. You ought to know how useless an untrained man would be on a farm.”

Abruptly one of the shoji slid open, and Kenshin turned slightly to see Enishi scowling down at them.

“I know it doesn’t affect either of you,” he said sourly, “but you’re still sitting in my father’s house, eating his food that he has no way of paying for now.”

Kenichi set his stick down and looked up curiously.

“But you don’t care about most people,” Enishi continued, pointing to Hiko and Kenshin in turn, “and you were a hitokiri for the winning side, so it’s all good, right?”

“You’ll stop that nonsense right now if you have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.” Hiko glowered at Enishi. “You do recall that he abandoned hitokiri work rather early on, don’t you? And also that he just happened to save your life and your sister’s as well?”

Kenshin set his cup down, and Kenichi used that opportunity to climb up onto the engawa and into his lap. “It’s fine. I knew that a new era would bring in many changes, some of which I couldn’t have even begun to guess at.” He wrapped an arm around his son. “And there are some people who are going to be angry about those changes.”

Even if it were ultimately for the best, but he let that part go unsaid.

“And your father’s routine hardly seemed disrupted until this morning,” Hiko put in, then scowled. “Not that his demeanor gave anything away. He’s not exactly a forthcoming man, is he?”

Enishi’s own scowl deepened. “What’s it to you?”

“How are you that man’s son?” Hiko demanded. “He barely raised an eyebrow when his daughter turned up with a child he’d never heard of and a famous hitokiri for a husband-”

“Oh, I thought he ‘abandoned hitokiri work rather early on’?” Enishi snapped. 

“He did,” Hiko snapped back. “Except your father has no idea about that, seeing as how he didn’t have the front-row seat to it that you did. You don’t have that excuse.”

“So did anyone want a bath?” Kenshin asked mildly. “Otetsudai-san said she lit the fire for the bath.”

Kenichi shook his head. “Kenichi not want bath!”

A smile flitted across Kenshin’s face. “Kenichi never want bath.” He shook his head. “Wants bath,” he corrected. “Wants.”

“Suit yourself, bozu.” Hiko stood, draining off the last of his sake and heading off toward the bath. “I’ll be back.”

…  
…

While the outside gate of the Kamiya house had been identical to the one outside her father’s house, Tomoe saw a world of difference once the gate had closed behind her and Kaoru had scampered off to find her own father.

“They were on the engawa when I left them,” Kaoru explained cheerfully. 

The courtyard surrounding her father’s house was small and perfectly ordered, with neither a stray leaf on the walkway nor a single pebble out of place in the rock garden. The Kamiyas’ yard, by contrast, was large and sprawling, with a distinctly lived-in look and a pair of plump chickens pecking and scratching in the dirt.

“That’s Naku-chan and Piyo-chan,” Kaoru said, and Tomoe couldn’t help but smile at the girl having named her pet chickens after the sounds they made. 

The house itself was considerably smaller than her father’s, likely owing to the fact that half of it seemed to have been taken down to make room for the impressive, high-ceilinged building beside it. The dojo was all gleaming wood and high-peaked roof on the outside, and a glance through the large main doorway showed a freshly-cleaned hardwood floor and racks of wooden swords along the inside walls.

“Otouchan has a handful of students now.” Kaoru smiled. “But we’re getting more every day.”

The entire effect was one of stark difference to her father’s house. Not a bad effect, Tomoe mused as she followed Kaoru towards the house, but very different.

Two men sat on the engawa, a small tray of snacks between them and a large sake jug close at hand. One of the men was a powerfully-built fellow, with thick hair that hung in a short ponytail and a friendly face. He was in the middle of pouring sake into two cups that sat beside the tray, though he stepped into his zori and rose to his feet when he saw Kaoru and Tomoe approach.

The other man was her father.

He sat slumped against a pillar, his legs out in front of him, one foot dangling nervelessly over the side of the engawa. His hands were folded limply in his lap, and his face had the disconnected look of a man who had drunk more than was healthy for him in a brief period of time.

“Otousan,” she murmured, a fresh stab of guilt piercing her heart.

“You must be Yukishiro-kun’s daughter,” Kamiya-san said, inclining his head slightly. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Yes, that’s my daughter.” Otousan blew out what Tomoe could only imagine to be a sake-soaked breath. He narrowed his eyes, and it was only then that Tomoe realized his spectacles were pushed back into his hair, face framed by a few strands that had come loose from his ponytail.

“Yukishiro-ojisan has been with us most of the afternoon.” Kaoru bounced on her heels, hands clasped behind her back.

“My only living daughter,” Otousan continued, as if he hadn’t heard Kaoru at all. He knocked back the cup of sake. “Who, until yesterday, I hadn’t seen for years.”

“Otousan, please.” Tomoe fought down the urge to crumple under another wave of guilt. “I’m here now. We’re all here now. Please don’t be this way.”

“Kaoru, why don’t you run to the market?” Kamiya-san started to suggest, but at Kaoru’s disappointed face, added, “Actually, why don’t you run to Mei and have them deliver sushi?”

Kaoru perked right up. “We haven’t had sushi in ages!” 

A moment later, she scampered off, calling “I’ll be back soon!” as she pulled the gate shut behind her.

Kamiya-san turned his gaze on Tomoe. “Won’t you sit down?” He gestured toward the engawa. “If you don’t care for sake, I’ll make tea.”

Tomoe bowed, reluctantly tearing her gaze away from her poor father in order to regard Kamiya-san politely.

“Yes, thank you,” she murmured. “And, perhaps, for my father as well?”

“Your father prefers the sake.” Otousan stared at Tomoe through narrowed eyes, and Tomoe wondered how much he could actually see without his spectacles. “I find it far more palatable in these troubled times.”

“The past few days have been something of a shock,” Kamiya-san offered kindly, before excusing himself with a quick, “I’ll go make the tea then, shall I?”

In the wake of their host’s sudden disappearance, Tomoe blinked once or twice before seating herself before her father on the engawa. 

“Otousan, I know I’ve disappointed you.” She reached out to gently move his spectacles down into position, hot shame forcing her to avoid meeting his eyes. “But I did what I thought was right.” She hung her head and whispered, “I’ve only ever done what I thought was right.”

When Otousan didn’t answer, Tomoe looked over at him. He was pouring himself a fresh cup of sake.

“Stop that.” She reached out to move the cup away from him, though he pulled back before she could take it. “You’ve had far too much already. Kamiya-san’s gone to get us some tea.” She frowned slightly. “It ought to be palatable enough. And besides, it may help to lessen the headache you’re going to have in the morning.”

Otousan hummed in response to that, then tipped back the sake cup. “It seems, Daughter, that in becoming a mother, you’ve decided to mother us all.”

“Am I meant to simply watch in silence while you make yourself ill?” A tightness clutched at her chest and throat, but she mastered herself. “What is it you want me to do, Otousan?”

“Are you just now asking for my advice?” Otousan set the cup down with an unsteady clunk. “And when I give it, will you heed it?”

His words cut deeply, and it was difficult for her to force herself not to let it show.

“What should I have done, then?” Her voice was quiet, her eyes focused on him. “Should I have stayed here and endured the whispers and the furtive glances and pretended not to hear them talk about me as if I were lower than a leper? Should I have spent the rest of my life mourning Kiyosato-sama and blaming myself the way everyone else blamed me?”

A flicker of - was it pain? - crossed Otousan’s face. 

Tomoe took a breath. “Should I have sat by and watched Enishi’s anger eat him up from the inside until there was nothing left of him but spite?”

And that, a look of real pain did settle in Otousan’s eyes.

“Ah yes,” he said softly. “My only living son.” His unfocused gaze drifted somewhere into the yard. “Who I suppose, now that he’s attached himself to the wild mountain man, has no use for his most useless father.”

Her father’s words struck Tomoe like physical blows, her resolve crumbling beneath them, and she felt a hot, shameful flood of tears begin suddenly to trickle down her face.

…  
…

Hiko breathed out a deep sigh and settled more deeply into the bathtub, feeling the soothing effects of the steaming water soak deeply into his muscles. Yukishiro’s well-appointed soaking tub, deep and wide and finely crafted of elegantly-grained hardwood, made his own repurposed rain barrel on Mount Atago seem like…

Well, like a rain barrel.

The door to the bath banged open, revealing Kenichi with one little fist on his hip and his face screwed up in frustration.

“Jiji!” He pointed an accusatory finger at Hiko. “Jiji in bath so long!”

Hiko rolled his head lazily on his neck to regard his indignant grandson.

“Just because you don’t like baths, bozu,” he drawled, eyes half-lidded in the relaxing steam, “doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.”

Kenichi folded his arms. “Kenichi not like bath.”

“We know.” Kenshin appeared behind his son, placing a hand on the boy’s head. “Leave Ojiji  
alone. This is likely more bath than he’s ever seen in his life.”

“I’m going to pretend you’re referring to the size of the tub.” Hiko opened his eyes fractionally more to glare at his idiot apprentice. “And not to any supposed uncleanliness on my part, which I know that even you wouldn’t be stupid enough to suggest.”

His idiot apprentice didn’t deign to answer, merely sliding the door shut while Kenichi cheerfully called, “Bye bye, Jiji!”

It was only with a great deal of reluctance that Hiko finally heaved himself out of the tub, dried, and pulled on his sleeping yukata.

Kenshin dragged his son off toward the bath after that, the boy howling a reminder that he did not, in fact, want a bath. 

Hiko found Enishi sitting on the engawa, eating a peach that was so ripe, the juice ran down his chin. It did nothing to improve the sour expression on his face though.

“You’d think that peach was a lemon,” Hiko remarked as he sat down beside the boy. “Has your father always been so wooden, or is that a new development?”

“Have you always been so crass,” Enishi shot back, “or do you just save all that charm for the people who live with you?”

“I’ve never had patience for people who don’t bother to say what they mean.” Hiko snorted. “Hiding behind all these layers of formality and ritual, talking in circles and using politeness as an excuse to avoid getting to the point. And your father’s clearly a master in that regard.”

“My father’s a samurai.” Enishi gnawed the peach down to the pit, then winged the pit toward the back gate near the kitchen. “Sorry you can’t keep up a conversation with him.”

“And I’m sorry you had to avoid it altogether.” He locked eyes with his second apprentice. “Don’t think no one noticed you making yourself scarce at the first opportunity. There’s a story there, if I’m not mistaken.”

Abruptly Enishi pushed himself to his feet and stalked into the house. “You don’t know anything about life in Musashino.”

“Pray enlighten me.” Hiko rose to his feet and easily kept pace with Enishi.

“Don’t mock me.” Enishi shoved one of the elaborately painted fusuma aside, revealing a part of the house Hiko had not yet seen. “And watch your head.”

The reminder was necessary, though of course Hiko refrained from saying so. He ducked just in time, and followed his younger apprentice into a small room - an alcove, really - dominated by a large lacquered hardwood altar with open doors. Within the altar, below an image of the Amida Butsu, was an array of small shelves on which rested an incense burner, a candlestick, a miniature bell, and several small black lacquered tablets. 

The whole of the butsudan was free of dust, even the incense burner, and on the lowest platform lay a small bowl of rice and one of the peaches from the morning. Clearly it was every bit as well-tended as the rest of the house.

Enishi opened one of the drawers, withdrew a box of matchsticks, and lit a stick of incense, placing it in the burner.

“My father tends to our family every morning and evening.” He spoke with his back to Hiko. “But as he’s not here, I suppose I should do it in his place.”

Carefully he replaced the box of matchsticks and slid the drawer shut.

“I came home once, and he was standing here with the matchstick lit. It had nearly burned down to his fingers.” He still didn’t look at Hiko. “I wonder, sometimes, if he would have let it. If he would have let it burn down the house, even.”

Hiko looked over the memorial tablets, comprehension beginning to dawn on him as he counted them. There were seven in all, three larger and four smaller. Yukishiro’s parents, he reasoned; his wife, and…

Ah.

It was a mark of just how decayed and meritless a world they lived in, he thought bitterly, when the memorial tablets for a man’s children outnumbered those for his ancestors.

“My parents’ first son was Takejiro.” Enishi’s fingers strayed over one of the memorial tablets, fingertips trailing gently down the hand-painted characters marking the front. “According to Neechan, he didn’t live to see his first year, but she was born after him.” He brushed over each tablet in turn. “After Neechan came Takeru, but he only lived a few months. Then another girl, Natsumi. Neechan said she died of fever in her second year.”

Hiko’s hands tightened convulsively inside the sleeves of his yukata. The row of memorial tablets seemed to loom larger until they occupied his entire field of vision and the dead children they represented took form. He could not bring himself to look at them any longer.

“I don’t want to think about picking the bones of a two year old.” Enishi said the words very quietly. “That would be like picking Keni-” He cut himself off, shaking his head and letting his fingertips brush over the next tablet. “After that, I guess my parents decided to try their luck with ‘-shi’ instead of ‘Take,’ but Satoshi died in infancy too. And then I came along.”

His fingers hovered over one of the larger tablets. “I killed my mother coming into this world. Her name was Hitomi.”

The image of Tomoe, covered in blood in her futon as Kenshin cradled her and Hiko readied himself to run down the mountain in search of help, swam into the forefront of his mind.

“You didn’t kill her, boy.” Hiko’s voice was gruff, but soft. “Any more than Kenichi would have killed your sister without the midwife’s intervention.”

Enishi folded his arms and looked down at the floor. “Had that happened, I would have hated him forever. So I can understand...” He gripped his sleeves so tightly, his fists trembled. “I can understand…” 

Abruptly he shook his head, and the realization slammed into Hiko like a boulder.

This, then, was the source of contention between the boy and his father. Yukishiro could not escape the fact that his son’s birth and his wife’s death had happened together, and Enishi could not make him do so.

“If your father hates you, he’s a fool,” Hiko said simply. “And if you accept his hatred, you’re a fool as well.”

…  
…

“Why can’t you see?”

Tomoe fought to keep from dissolving into tears entirely, but it was all she could do to hold her face somewhat steady. She certainly could no longer stem the flood of tears that streamed steadily down her cheeks.

“We came back here. We came back to you. The war made it unsafe for us to travel, but I wrote to you as often as I could.” She blinked furiously, but the tears would not stop. “And I’m sorry that we didn’t come sooner. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you everything. I’m sorry that you’ve been so lonely that you think Enishi has no use for you, but we’re here now.” She took a shaky breath. “We wouldn’t have come at all if we didn’t care.”

“I imagine Enishi didn’t wish to come here at all,” Otousan said softly. “My unreachable son finally found someone who could reach him.” He pushed his spectacles back up into his hair and rubbed his eyes. “I shall have to thank the wild mountain man properly for that, though it doesn’t appear he cares for any common courtesies at all.”

“Enishi isn’t unreachable.” 

Tomoe wiped at her face, but the tears continued to flow. Her father had read so much correctly, but still gotten so much wrong. He could see Enishi’s hesitation, but neither the cause of it nor the solution to it. He could see Hiko-san’s directness and disdain for refinement, but he could not see beyond it. And he could see the mistakes that Tomoe herself had made, but not her efforts to repair them.

“Hiko-san is helping him, but Hiko-san isn’t his father.” She reached out a hand tentatively towards him, hesitated, then placed her hand over his. “He needs you, Otousan. We both do.”

Otousan closed his eyes, a faint sigh escaping his lips. After a moment, he placed his other hand over hers. 

“You’re married.” He said the words so quietly, Tomoe almost didn’t hear them. “My only living daughter, and I wasn’t there to see you marry.”

“I wish you’d been able to be there,” she whispered, her hand tightening around his. “Everything was so strange then… Neither of us knew how much longer we were going to survive.” She took a deep and shuddering breath, trying to swallow back more tears. “But we’re here now. The war is over, and we’re no longer in any danger, and I’ve brought my husband and my son to meet you.”

“Ah yes. Himura-kun.” Otousan cracked an eye open. “Hitokiri Battousai. Of all the possible men…” He looked at her with both eyes now, still unfocused, but sharpening slightly. “What will his role be in our new government? How will he serve Katsura Kogoro now?”

“I don’t think he will,” Tomoe said, wiping the last few tears from her face. 

Kenshin had said nothing to her about his plans for after the war, but if she knew her husband - and she believed she knew him better than nearly anyone - he would want to stay far away from any further possible bloodshed. 

“He was glad to come home, and he’s never even hinted at going to work in the new government.”

But that question reminded her of something that very nearly started her sobbing again. 

“Otousan… Otetsudai-san said that all the Shogun’s retainers had been let go.”

“Did Otetsudai-san say that?” A slight frown skated across Otousan’s mouth, but didn’t land. “I didn’t think she was one to tell tales.”

“Kaoru-chan said the same thing,” Tomoe persisted.

“Kaoru-chan has seen all of seven summers.” A moment, then, “But yes, we were all released from our service to the Shogun. His closest retainers went into exile with him in the new Shizuoka domain. The rest of us are to remain in our districts.”

“How?” Tomoe felt that cold sensation seize her vitals again. “How will you remain here? How will you even eat?”

Otousan shook his head. “These are not the concerns of a daughter.”

“Aren’t they?” Tomoe’s eyebrows knit in slight indignation. “Not even a daughter who is interested in her father’s well-being after not seeing him for years?”

“You’ve become rather forward, Daughter.” Despite the term, there was no real rebuke in Otousan’s tone. “Perhaps the mountain man has begun to influence you.”

“Perhaps.” 

Tomoe would have smiled at her father’s remark had the question of his livelihood not still been unanswered. She also would have found it amusing that her words had been ‘forward’ in her father’s opinion, while Hiko-san would have scoffed and told her to say what was on her mind more plainly next time. But Hiko-san’s brusque and direct nature had become so familiar to her that she no longer took note of it. 

It was no wonder her father thought of him as a ‘wild mountain man’.

“And perhaps I’ve begun to influence him in return.” She looked anxiously at her father. “But you haven’t told me how you’re going to get along now.”

“My rice stipend,” Otousan finally said, “has been turned into a pension of sorts. As has Kamiya-kun’s, as have all the rest of the Shogun’s retainers, save the ones who joined him in exile.”

There was no way of describing the relief that washed over Tomoe just then. She brought her free hand to her chest and sagged slightly.

“Oh,” she said, her hand tightening in his once more. “Oh, thank the gods. I thought you’d be out on the street.”

“No,” he murmured, his gaze drifting into the yard. “No, such a thing hasn’t happened yet.”

…  
…

“You don’t understand anything.” 

Enishi’s voice was raw. He looked at Hiko with angry, wet eyes, arms still folded and fingers still clenched around his sleeves. 

“You hardly bother with your own family. We’ve lived with you for years, and the only reason we know you have a brother is because he came looking for you.”

“My own family sent my brother to live at a temple rather than raise him.” Hiko glared back at Enishi, staring down the boy’s anger. “Once it was clear that my oldest brother wasn’t going to die from any childhood malady, there was no need for two additional sons.” He snorted. “Not for a pathetic samurai family out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to lay claim to but tracts of mud and a few dozen starving peasants. So they gave him to the temple and didn’t bat an eye when I eventually left to find my fortune.”

“I don’t think my father wanted even one son.” Enishi looked away. “He would have been happy with his books.”

“Then why did he keep trying?” Hiko asked the question without requiring or even expecting an answer. “If all he wanted was to be left to his studies, he could very easily have done it.” He gestured to the butsudan and its many small monuments. “He could have avoided all that loss, but he didn’t.”

Enishi snorted. “Did your pathetic samurai family teach you nothing? You keep trying for sons because it’s expected. You marry because it’s expected.” He looked away again, but not quickly enough to prevent Hiko from noticing the tears threatening to spill down his face. “Everything in Musashino, in every samurai district in Edo, is about expectation. What anyone wants is unimportant.”

“It’s also expected that no one ever speaks his mind or comes directly to the point.” Hiko folded his arms. “Don’t tell me what’s important and unimportant. I’ve known your father for a day, and already I know enough about him to know that you’ve never had this discussion, or anything close to it, with him.”

“You don’t know my father at all.” Enishi glared at him, angry tears trailing down his face. 

“Don’t I?” Hiko arched an eyebrow. 

Enishi might have been angry, but Hiko knew from long experience that anger often preceded epiphany. Better to force him towards an experience that would help him grow than to coddle and protect him.

“He’s sealed himself off behind a fortress of formality so he’ll never have to admit how much he’s lost.” Hiko looked grimly down at his second apprentice - only one of the lives he had assumed responsibility for. “But he hasn’t been honest about it, and I’m willing to bet that you haven’t either.”

“And what am I supposed to be honest about? What should I say?” Enishi scrubbed his sleeve against his face. “Sorry I killed my mother? Sorry I’m not the son he wanted?” Again, he looked away. “Sorry he got stuck with me at all?”

“You can start there,” Hiko replied flatly. “Start there and see what happens. But you’re not going to get anywhere playing by your father’s rules.” He frowned deeply. “Always tiptoeing around the point instead of saying what needs to be said. Always careful not to say or do too much, for fear it might not be _polite_.” He scoffed. “How much has that ever solved? And how much has it made worse?”

Enishi scoffed in disgust. “You really don’t know how to talk to people at all, do you? People like my father? Actual samurai, not your pathetic samurai family.” 

Hiko snorted again. “If a man can’t handle being told the truth - if he can’t bring himself to tell the truth to another man’s face - then how much of a man is he?” Hiko stared down into his second apprentice’s eyes. “Samurai or peasant, old or young, every man needs his own dose of the truth.”

“Jiji! Nishi-jichan!”

Kenichi clambered onto the engawa and scampered into the house, tiny feet slapping against the tatami mats. He was wrapped in a sleeping yukata, hair damp and freshly combed and cheeks pink from what looked like a thorough scrubbing.

Enishi sniffled once and wiped his sleeve across his face.

“I thought I heard a young noise,” Hiko said wryly as he reached down to scoop Kenichi up. “Where’s your father, bozu?”

Kenichi screwed up his face. “Touchan _want_ bath!”

“Well, of course he does.” Hiko hoisted Kenichi up into the crook of one massive arm. “It’s only Kenichi that seems to enjoy his own filth.”

“Touchan say bath so big, want sit in bath!” Kenichi gestured enthusiastically with tiny hands. “So now Kenichi all clean, Touchan sit in bath.”

“Because it’s not a rain barrel,” Enishi put in. “It’s an actual, real bathtub.”

“I suppose that’s our next project, then,” Hiko grumbled, already thinking of how disappointing his first bath back on Mount Atago was going to be after Yukishiro’s luxurious tub.

“What project?” Kenichi looked curiously at Hiko. “What project, Jiji?”

Enishi folded his arms. “I hope Neechan comes back soon.”

…  
…

“I’m back!” 

Kaoru pushed the gate open and skipped inside, followed by a delivery boy not too much older than her, who was balancing two lacquered, round platters covered with lids.

Kamiya-san chose that moment to appear on the engawa. “Oh, excellent timing.” He smiled. “The tea just so happens to be ready now.”

Kaoru scrunched her face up at that. “The tea took a really long time.”

“Didn’t it though?” Kamiya-san gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ll just go put it together now, shall I?”

The boy set the platters down on the engawa, bowed, and headed out through the gate. Tomoe gave her father’s hand a final squeeze before relinquishing it and rising to her feet, suddenly realizing that she was both exhausted and ravenously hungry.

“Shall I help you set up for dinner?” Tomoe asked Kaoru, trying for a smile despite feeling emotionally wrung-out.

Kaoru hummed thoughtfully. “I guess you can take the lids off the sushi platters, if you like? But you’re our guest, and Otouchan and I will take care of you.” She gestured toward the dining area inside. “Please sit. Relax.”

Before Tomoe could push back on the suggestion, Kaoru skipped off, presumably toward the kitchen. Left with no other demands on her, Tomoe knelt back down beside her father.

“Will you come back home tomorrow?” she asked, peering down anxiously at his face. “To speak with Kenshin, and Hiko-san, and Enishi, and Kenichi, and try to get to know them all?”

Otousan sighed, and his whole body seemed to deflate with the sound. “Where else would I go?” he finally said. “I have no other business to attend to.”

A thought struck Tomoe as she looked down at her despondent father. “If you’re on a pension,” she said hopefully, “doesn’t that mean that you can devote yourself to your studies and your family without having to worry about official business intruding?” She tried for a slight smile. “That can’t be a bad thing, can it?”

“It is not the job of a daughter to attempt to mollify her father,” Otousan said mildly. “That’s energy better spent on a mother-in-law.” A slight frown crossed his face. “Though I don’t imagine the mountain man has a wife.”

Tomoe felt an absurd urge to laugh bubble up inside her. She managed to quell it, and all that surfaced was a small smile, but she felt considerably lighter than she had in days.

Perhaps things would be all right after all.

“No,” she said. “I don’t imagine he ever did or ever will.”

She did not add that she doubted a woman who could tolerate him as a husband existed in the world. Or could conceivably exist without being some sort of astral deity of infinite patience and mercy.

Kamiya-san and Kaoru appeared on the engawa then, and before long, they were all sitting in a small circle enjoying the sushi. Tomoe did her best to be polite, but her sudden and ravenous hunger unfortunately got the better of her.

“This is delicious,” she murmured, reaching for another piece of sushi as though she had been starving on the streets. Or like Enishi whenever food of any sort appeared in his general vicinity. “I’m so grateful for your hospitality, Kamiya-san.”

“And Kaoru and I are so happy to finally meet you.” Kamiya-san smiled, and Kaoru nodded enthusiastically. “After all, we’ve been hearing about you for years.”

She froze, a piece of sushi halfway to her mouth. The women of Musashino had been whispering loudly about her for long enough. What poison had they dripped into Kamiya-san’s ears?

“Oh?” she asked quietly, with an anxious glance at her father, who merely looked back at her without even the slightest change in expression.

“Yep!” Kaoru said. “You see, our neighbors think we’re kind of strange because Otouchan tore down half the house to build our dojo and he’s teaching me how to protect life and also he has some ideas that are completely unsuitable and not bushido, like-” 

“Not bushido?” Kamiya-san sipped his tea. “I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.”

“Yep! Like a sword that protects life? Not bushido.” Kaoru shoved a piece of sushi into her mouth. “That’s what they said. Though what do they know anyway?”

A small smile flitted across Otousan’s face. Tomoe, though, frowned slightly.

“I see they haven’t strayed from the habit of talking about other people’s lives,” she murmured. “How do you stand it?”

Kamiya-san set his teacup down. “By finding the company of others who are likewise talked about. Kaoru and I would have had a very difficult few years without Yukishiro-kun’s company.”

“You esteem me too highly,” Otousan said quietly, though the miniscule smile lingered on his face.

“The rest of them esteem you far too little.” Tomoe reached over and gently took her father’s hand again. She felt somehow emboldened by everything that had transpired that day. 

Emboldened, and yet deeply humbled.

If it had not been for Kamiya-san and his friendship, her father would have been entirely isolated during the past few years. Alone in a house filled with ghosts, with the hateful whispers of the people who should have been his friends and colleagues surrounding him, and with no respite even to be dreamed of.

“I am in your debt,” she offered, turning to Kamiya-san with a bow. “I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done for my father.”

Kamiya-san merely smiled, shook his head in a self-deprecating fashion, and poured more tea into her cup.

Before long, they had finished the sushi. Kaoru-chan had begun to yawn, and Otousan seemed on the verge of falling asleep where he sat.

“It’s time I headed back,” she said, rising to her feet and facing Kamiya-san. “Thank you again. For everything.”

“Think nothing of it,” Kamiya-san replied genially, getting smoothly to his own feet and stretching. “May I walk you home?”

She accepted gratefully, and only a few minutes later, she bowed goodnight to Kamiya-san outside the gate of her father’s house.

It had been the most exhausting day she’d had for years, but it had ended in perhaps the best way it could have. Her father did not seem nearly as upset or disappointed in her as he had been ever since they had arrived, she no longer worried about him being thrown out into the street to starve, and she had met the family who, as fellow outcasts in Musashino, had befriended him and saved him from going mad with loneliness and grief.

All in all, she thought as she closed the gate gently behind her, a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> So let's just jump right in with the cultural notes, shall we? I have a few of them, so...
> 
> Papa Yukishiro (who, if you remember, I named Takeshi)'s male children being named either 'Take' or '-shi.' This is standard samurai naming convention, using one character from the father's name to create the first son's name. (You see it in canon too. Kaoru's from a samurai family, so even though Kenshin isn't, she followed convention by naming her child 'Kenji'. And you see it in an earlier part of this story, with Kenshin and Tomoe choosing the name 'Kenichi'.) Depressingly, since several of Takeshi and Hitomi's sons died, they burned through several 'Take' and '-shi' names until they landed on Enishi.
> 
> No, Tomoe's mother was never named in canon, so I decided to give her a name. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Enishi's really disturbing line: “I don’t want to think about picking the bones of a two year old.” Enishi said the words very quietly. “That would be like picking Keni-”
> 
> The Japanese are cremated after death, and the surviving family use special chopsticks to pick their bones from the ashes and place them into an urn. Papa Yukishiro would have had to do this for all of his children and then his wife. And... uh... yep, that's about all I need to say.
> 
> Everything Papa Yukishiro told Tomoe about what happened to all 5000 of the Shogun's retainers is pretty historically accurate. His closest retainers followed him into exile. The rest were told to stay in their Edo samurai districts, were quietly pensioned off, and were told to find new means of supporting themselves. The new Meiji government didn't want to hire men who had been the Shogun's actual retainers (which would be literally all Edo samurai, pretty much), though they eventually did hire some of them because they had useful bureaucratic skills. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> So the holidays are coming up, and while it will be very different this year, I suspect I won't be posting anything on 27 December. Which means this is the last update of this trashfire year of our Lord 2020. Unless I end up nursing some massive, three day hangover (unlikely, but hey), the next update will be on 3 January in what will hopefully be the less trashfirey year of 2021.
> 
> Until then, Bat-fam, enjoy the various winter holidays, stay safe, stay healthy, and see you in the new year!


	26. Reprieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tomoe?” Kenshin looked at his wife. “Come to Yoshiwara with me.”
> 
> Tomoe’s head snapped up so quickly it might have been on a spring. The look on her face was one of mingled astonishment and scandal, and Hiko burst out with a raucous laugh.
> 
> “Even I know you’re not supposed to take your wife to the red-light district.” He shook his head. “What’s gotten into you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY - DOES ANYONE USE THE GLOSSARY? OR IS IT JUST SITTING HERE, UNLOVED AND UNREAD?  
> Otetsudai-san : literally ‘Ms. Housekeeper’  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Oiran: high-ranking courtesans, considered better than “common” sex workers  
> Kamuro girl : child assistants of oiran, between 5-11 years old  
> Hinamatsuri : doll’s day festival for girls  
> Terakoya : temple school, taught by samurai or Buddhist priests, required for the children of samurai  
> Daisho: long sword (katana) and short sword (wakizashi) paired together  
> Zori : sandals that are made of straw, cork, or wood  
> Butsudan : Buddhist family altar  
> Torii : gateway of a Shinto shrine

**Founding year of Meiji  
(the following day)**

The next morning, Yukishiro-san returned right as Tomoe and Otetsudai-san were laying out another elaborate breakfast. 

Otetsudai-san bowed deeply and welcomed him home, disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with another meal tray, but otherwise gave no indication that Yukishiro-san’s behavior was anything out of the ordinary.

Enishi, on the other hand, kept shooting his father furtive looks throughout the meal. Once the dishes were cleared away, he sucked in his breath and said:

“Otousan? Did you want to…” His hands clenched into the fabric of his hakama. “Did you want to take a walk?”

What might have been a mild expression of surprise passed over Yukishiro-san’s face, and if he noticed the hopeful look in Tomoe’s eyes, he didn’t comment on it.

“Yes.” He nodded. “Yes, I should like that very much.”

Tomoe nearly sagged in relief. Kenshin resisted the urge to reach out and steady her. Best not to draw attention to things.

The gate closed behind Enishi and his father, and Hiko turned to Tomoe with a smirk.

“I think your brother might have come to something of a realization when he was showing me around the house last evening.” He chuckled and settled his hands on his knees. “Though I’m surprised he’s decided to do something about it so soon.”

“Nishi-jichan is walking with Ojiisan,” Kenichi declared with a nod. 

Clearly Kenshin had missed something during his bath last evening. He put an arm around Tomoe’s waist and nudged her closer. 

“You seem pleased,” he murmured.

“You have no idea,” she sighed, settling comfortably against him. “Things have always been so tense between the pair of them… I can’t remember the last time they went for a walk together, let alone the last time Enishi suggested it.”

“He was trying to teach me something last night,” Hiko said with a note of definite self-satisfaction in his voice. “But I think he wound up teaching himself.”

Kenichi beamed. “Good job, Nishi-jichan!”

Kenshin smiled at his son, reached out, and ran his fingers through the boy’s hair. Kenichi’s smile widened, and as he leaned into the touch, Kenshin was seized with the sudden, powerful determination that he would do whatever it took to never have that sort of strained relationship with his own son.

Tomoe reached out a hand as well, her fingers finding Kenshin’s in their son’s hair, and smiled a contented sort of smile.

“They’re likely to be out for some time,” she murmured.

Which meant a pleasant day of drinking tea on the engawa and playing with Kenichi… unless…

“Tomoe?” Kenshin looked at his wife. “Come to Yoshiwara with me.”

Tomoe’s head snapped up so quickly it might have been on a spring. The look on her face was one of mingled astonishment and scandal, and Hiko burst out with a raucous laugh.

“Even I know you’re not supposed to take your wife to the red-light district.” He shook his head. “What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s not-” Kenshin shook his head and scowled. “It’s not like that. I know a woman there.”

Which, judging by the look on Tomoe’s face, was the absolute worst thing to say.

“No.” Kenshin sighed. “It’s not like that either. I just…” Another sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a breath. “A friend. I have a friend there, and I told her that next time I was in the area, I would bring my wife to meet her.”

The look on Tomoe’s face was suddenly very reminiscent of her father’s - unreadable, but hiding countless layers of meaning. She held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded.

“All right,” she said calmly. “I’ll come with you.”

As Kenshin pulled the gate shut behind them, and over Kenichi’s cheerful “Bye bye, Kaachan! Bye bye, Touchan!” Hiko called out:

“No, I don’t mind looking after the boy at all.” He sat on the engawa, Kenichi by his side, his expression somewhere between a glower and a smirk. “It’s a small enough price to pay for having witnessed that ridiculous display just now.”

Kenshin threw him a scowl before closing the gate behind them.

“So,” said Tomoe after a few blocks. “I imagine there’s something of a story here.”

“Something of a story,” Kenshin agreed. “She’s an oiran. Apparently a very popular one…” 

Quickly he explained that his successor had introduced them, that the three of them had managed to meet up a handful of times over the years, and that after Shishio had fallen at Toba-Fushimi, Kenshin had brought her the news and then promised to introduce her to his wife when he returned.

“We played hanafuda cards every time.” A small smile flitted across his lips. “I only ever won a single round.”

Tomoe’s expression softened somewhat, and she edged slightly closer to him as they walked. “She was involved with your successor, then? I should offer her my condolences.”

Just as it had been last time, Yoshiwara bustled with daytime activity of the errand-running and shopping variety. Though unlike last time, and perhaps because he was accompanied by a woman, people refrained from throwing Kenshin sly looks or making snide remarks about how some young men couldn’t wait until evening.

He found the correct brothel - the Hanakotoba - with no difficulty, rapped on the door until someone opened it, and recognized the same little kamuro girl who had answered the door last time.

“Oniisan.” She giggled behind her sleeve. “I remember you from before. You’re here to see Hanahomura-dono even though this is her sleeping time and she’s not to be disturbed by anyone unless it’s very important.”

Without hesitation, and ignoring Tomoe’s questioning look, he slipped the little girl a coin.

The coin disappeared into the girl’s sleeve and she giggled again. “I understand, Oniisan. It’s very important. Be right back.” She slid the door closed.

Kenshin glanced at his wife. “That’s just how it is here.”

…  
…

A subdued anxiety hovered at the back of Tomoe’s mind - nothing like the anxiety she’d felt over the past day or so, but still noticeable. 

She had naturally never been to Yoshiwara before, had been taught from a young age to steer clear of it, and the simple act of setting foot inside it provoked a sensation of having somehow misbehaved. 

She took her eyes from the closed door in front of her to steal a glance at Kenshin, who looked entirely unperturbed. Of course, he had been here before. Recently, which was why the girl had remembered him. 

The sudden and absurd thought that the girl had been so _young_ struck her just as the door opened again.

“Hanahomura-dono is ready to see you,” the girl smiled, bowing them inside. “She’s invited you both to have breakfast with her.”

As they climbed the narrow flight of stairs that led to the upper floor of the brothel, Tomoe felt that wild sensation of illicitness flit through her again and tried to master it. After all, she reasoned, Kenshin would never have asked her to accompany him here if anything untoward were going to happen.

At the top of the stairs, the girl directed them to the right and down toward the end of the hallway. At the last doorway, she stopped, knelt, and slid the shoji aside.

The woman who sat on a cushion in the center of the room looked only a year or two younger than Tomoe herself. She was dressed simply but elegantly, in a light beige kimono of clearly expensive silk, patterned in delicate sunflowers. Her hair was piled into a knot on top of her head, secured by a single ivory hairpin. A few strands had escaped the halfhearted attempt to tame them, and fell beside her unpainted face. She was lovely in an effortless and understated way.

“Himura-san,” she said in a low and musical voice, rising to her feet and offering Kenshin a smile and a bow before turning to regard Tomoe. “And this must be your wife.” Her smile widened, and she offered Tomoe a similar bow. “I’m so pleased to see you both.”

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Yumi-dono.” Kenshin returned the bow and then gestured to Tomoe. “This is my wife, Tomoe.”

Tomoe bowed and murmured a polite greeting, then frowned slightly. “Yumi-dono?” she asked, turning to Kenshin. “Didn’t the girl say she was called Hanahomura-dono?”

The woman smiled. “I do business as Hanahomura. I was born Komagata Yumi.” A private sort of smile crossed her lips, as if she were in on a joke the rest of them wouldn’t understand. 

She must have chosen her family name, Tomoe realized with a start. It was unlikely that parents who were desperate enough to sell their daughter to a brothel, even to become an oiran, had any sort of family name to pass on.

Her stomach lurched uncomfortably at the thought. 

Yumi nodded at Kenshin, and her smile took on a slightly mischievous quality. “He won knowledge of my true name in a hanafuda card game. The only game he won, by the by.”

A small smile flitted across Kenshin’s mouth. “My victory was well worth the many losses.”

“I’m so pleased to hear that.” Yumi gestured toward three trays laid out with food. “It would be my pleasure to share breakfast with you. Though I suppose it’s lunchtime for you.”

The ease with which Kenshin set his sword down and joined Yumi on the cushions was a sudden and uncomfortable reminder for Tomoe of how many years the war had kept them apart. Of how much time they had missed together while their lives continued to move forward regardless.

They had so much time to make up for.

“So, Tomoe-san,” Yumi said, once vague pleasantries about food had been exchanged and a few bites had been nibbled, “Himura-san is notoriously tight-lipped about his family, though he’s lost enough card games against me that I know you have a little boy. He should be in his third summer now, should he not?”

“He is.” 

Tomoe wished she had seated herself the slightest bit closer to Kenshin, if only so that she could feel his reassuring presence at less of a distance. Still, she smiled as the image of their son reminding everyone of his age came to the forefront of her mind. 

“Kenichi tells everyone who will listen that he’s in his third year.”

“Himura-san was also very tight-lipped about where his family was living while he was otherwise occupied in Kyoto.” Yumi threw Kenshin a teasing smile, then shifted back to Tomoe. “Though he did tell me that your father lives right here in our glorious new eastern capital of Tokyo.”

Kenshin ate a bite of grilled fish and otherwise looked entirely unperturbed. Of course he could easily put away a second breakfast; he was a healthy, young man.

“My father has lived here his entire life,” Tomoe replied, wondering where Yumi herself had come from. 

If she had learned anything from living with Kenshin, it was that the humblest of beginnings could still produce the best of people. Of course, the reverse was also true.

She sipped her tea. “He lives in Musashino. He’s recently retired.”

Yumi’s eyebrows quirked at that. “Musashino?” She turned a coy look on Kenshin. “Himura-san, you didn’t tell me you married a samurai’s daughter.”

“I didn’t tell you much about my family.” Kenshin picked up his rice bowl. “Notoriously tight-lipped, remember?”

“Yes, but…” An almost pouting look crossed Yumi’s face. “That would have made our conversations that much more enriching.”

It was unsurprising that Yumi would have thought this; the story of an Ishin Shishi soldier falling in love with the daughter of a samurai would have sounded terribly romantic. But stories of romance never seemed to portray the knife’s edge of danger that their love had forced them to walk. 

“Did he tell you about his shishou?” she asked, watching Kenshin out of the corner of her eye. “That would certainly have made for enriching conversation.”

Yumi’s eyes lit up. “Another like you, Himura-san? Is he just as adorable?”

Kenshin nearly choked on his rice at that, and Yumi looked positively delighted. She threw a conspiratorial smile at Tomoe before gently nudging Kenshin’s teacup forward.

“‘Adorable’ is not a word I would ever apply to him,” Kenshin muttered before picking up his cup and chugging the contents down.

“Even when he’s holding our son in his lap?” Tomoe couldn’t resist. She glanced sidelong at Yumi, returning her smile. “You just mean you’d never say it in his presence.”

“There’s no adorableness by proxy.” Kenshin set his cup back on the tray with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

Yumi giggled behind her sleeve. “Your husband is just darling when he’s flustered, Tomoe-san.”

Tomoe smiled back. 

There was something of a relief in being able to talk to another woman openly and without fear of what might be whispered behind her back. She hadn’t realized it during all the years she had lived on Mount Atago, but she had missed having female company.

“He’s right, though. Hiko-san is hardly adorable.” She reached over to refill Kenshin’s cup. “He’s a good man, and he has a noble heart, but he’s exceedingly gruff and blunt.” She smiled. “I sometimes think he does it deliberately, so that most people never get the chance to know him.”

Yumi hummed thoughtfully in response. “Men like that are often quite allergic to affection, and so create walls to keep others from getting too close to their hearts.” 

Kenshin frowned into his bowl of natto soybeans. Tomoe, meanwhile, was suddenly and forcibly reminded of her own father.

He had never done well with affection, but considering how much he had lost, perhaps that was to be expected. He had definitely built walls around himself - walls of formality, of politeness, of socially acceptable distance - but had he done so to prevent himself from being further hurt? He had been unable to relate to Enishi, who had tried ham-handedly to capture his attention, if not his affection, even though Enishi and Tomoe were all he had left of his wife.

“Walls can be broken down,” she murmured. “Or at least have doors put in.”

Yumi studied Tomoe for what could have only been a moment, but then she picked up her teacup and smiled lightly.

“So Himura-san, now that the war is over and your compatriots victorious, have you come to take a position in our new government?” She sipped her tea. “I’m sure they are positively eager to have you.”

“They very well may be.” Kenshin set his empty bowl down and returned his attention to the grilled fish. “But I’m not eager to join them.”

“Why is that?” Yumi sounded genuinely surprised. “I would think they would not only desire you very much, but truly need you as well.”

“They don’t need me.” Kenshin’s voice was firm. “I don’t have Katsura Kogoro or Okubo Toshimichi’s vision.” He set his chopsticks down. “I can help tear one government down. I lack the skill to build a new one up.”

Yumi frowned. “You esteem yourself and your contributions to this country too poorly, Himura-san.”

“It’s not about whether you have the skill or not,” Tomoe offered gently, her eyes on her husband. “I know you don’t want any more fighting. And I know how seriously you take the vow you’ve made.”

The fact that Kenshin had told her of his vow never to take another life before he had even told his own shishou was everything Tomoe ever needed to know about her husband. He was a good man, possibly the best she knew, and she would honor his decisions.

The conversation continued pleasantly after that. They spoke a little more about Kenichi, or perhaps it had been quite a bit more. Tomoe found it terribly easy to share stories of her son’s antics.

“I should love to meet him one day,” Yumi said longingly, and Tomoe surprised herself by offering to bring him next time.

Yumi even shared a bit of local gossip with them. Apparently one of her guests had told her about the ‘gas lamps’ his company was hoping to install in Tokyo and Osaka.

“Of course, I’m not entirely sure what a ‘gas lamp’ is meant to be,” Yumi added, “but he all but assured me that it would ‘modernize and Westernize Japan as we know it.’”

They even talked a little about Yoshiwara; apparently some of the trendiest teahouses and even kimono makers were situated in the district.

Tomoe once again surprised herself by saying, “I’ve always wanted to wear one of those truly elaborate kimono. I had to wear a borrowed yukata for my own wedding.”

“Next time,” Yumi said immediately. “Bring your boy next time, and in return, I’ll dress you up like my very own Hinamatsuri doll.”

Tomoe’s eyes brightened, and she wasted no time in agreeing to Yumi’s bargain.

“I liked her,” Tomoe said as she and Kenshin made their way back towards Musashino. She regarded her husband with a small smile. “And she certainly seems to like you.”

“I could tell that you liked her,” Kenshin agreed. “And I think she was completely serious about dressing you up like her own Hinamatsuri doll.” He gestured broadly around his head. “You’ll probably find yourself in one of those elaborate oiran wigs.”

Tomoe’s smile broadened, and she moved closer to Kenshin as they walked. “I’ll look as though I’m dressing up in a costume, not as though I’m actually meant to be wearing it.”

“You’ll be the most beautiful doll on the shelf,” Kenshin teased, and yet Tomoe felt her cheeks flush at his words.

As if they were newlyweds. 

They returned home to peals of laughter, and they opened the gate to find Kaoru chasing a madly giggling Kenichi around the courtyard. Hiko-san sat on the engawa, his expression that of a man who had no idea how he had found himself in such a profoundly perplexing situation.

“Oh hello, Oneesan.” Kaoru beamed up at Tomoe, ponytail mussed and hair ribbon askew. “I was teaching Kenichi-kun how to play tag.”

“Tag!” Kenichi shouted, patting Kaoru’s arm repeatedly. “Kaoru-chan, tag!”

“Yep, I’m it!” Kaoru agreed, as Kenichi scampered off. She looked at Kenshin and bowed. “And you must be Himura Battousai-san. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Before Tomoe or Kenshin could reply, Kaoru turned and chased after Kenichi, shouting, “I’m coming to get you, Kenichi-kun!”

Tomoe beamed at the children as she moved across the courtyard to sit beside Hiko-san on the engawa. Her father and Enishi, she noted, were not back yet. She supposed it would take them some time to discuss everything that was on their minds.

“The girl came in and said she was on her way home from terakoya,” Hiko-san said with an air of palpable relief. “And the pair of them have been tearing around ever since.”

Kenshin eased his sword from his belt and sat down on the engawa as Hiko-san gruffly added, “I supposed that I’d better keep an eye on them just to make sure neither of them fell down the well or some such foolishness.”

“I know how hard this is for you.” Kenshin couldn’t keep the smirk off his face. “But Tomoe and I want you to know that we think you’re doing your best.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed. He was clearly on the point of saying something acidic when Tomoe cut in.

“Otetsudai-san’s in the kitchen. You can always go and get her if you’d rather not be out here.”

Hiko turned his slit-eyed gaze on her, his mouth a thin line. “I’m perfectly capable of supervising children,” he grumbled. “I’ve looked after Kenichi often enough, after all.”

“And he hasn’t kicked either child into the canal beyond the back gate yet,” Kenshin said with an air of perfect neutrality, but a gleam in his eyes. “He’s making real progress.”

It looked as though it was costing Hiko-san a great deal to pretend he hadn’t heard Kenshin.

“Tag!” Kaoru’s voice rang out from the other side of the yard, near the back gate. “Kenichi-kun is it!”

…  
…

A week later, Hiko was beginning to feel very enclosed.

His idiot apprentice and Tomoe had been making daily excursions into the city to explore and, ostensibly, to enjoy themselves in the new capital now that the war was over. They had gotten into the habit of leaving as soon as breakfast was finished and not returning until well after lunch - and sometimes not until nearly dinnertime. They brought Kenichi with them as often as not, and while they had offered the same chance to Hiko more than once, he had declined. 

“Jiji, come too!” Kenichi encouraged.

“The proprietor of the teashop we visited yesterday recommended a very good dumpling restaurant to us,” Tomoe added. “We thought we might try it.”

“By all means, enjoy yourselves,” he replied sourly. “But if it means venturing into that teeming mass of humanity out there, count me out.” 

Tomoe frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Cities are cramped, crowded, and noisy,” Hiko sniffed. “There’s a reason I live on top of a mountain.”

“All right, Shishou.” Kenshin raised an eyebrow. “Suit yourself.”

His other apprentice, meanwhile, had been taking long, daily walks with his father. The pair of them seemed to be slowly moving their way towards one another after years of animosity, and while Hiko supposed this was no bad thing, it had robbed him of even the small pleasure of training the boy for the past week.

“Go kick Kenshin into a canal or something,” Enishi suggested, right as Yukishiro appeared on the engawa, daisho at his waist. “That’d probably be fun for you.”

The smallest of frowns creased Yukishiro’s mouth at that, but otherwise he said nothing.

“The canals around here aren’t deep enough.” Hiko glared at the boy. “Why do you think I haven’t kicked you into any? Where’s the fun in kicking someone into water shallow enough to stand up in?”

“Some of the canals are quite a bit deeper than that,” Yukishiro offered, though his stoic expression made it impossible to tell if he were joking or not.

And judging by Enishi’s face, he didn’t know either.

“Go for your walk,” Hiko grumbled. “If you’re not training, you should at least be moving.”

And so Hiko was left in the courtyard house all day, with the housekeeper bustling around and Kenichi occasionally coming to sit beside him when he wasn’t out with his parents. 

He was beginning to feel such a longing for the open space and solitude on the mountainside of Atago that the thought of simply going back there and telling the rest of them to return when they’d finished their business in Tokyo had occurred to him once or twice.

In fact, he had a mind to tell his idiot apprentice as much when he returned.

“We brought back some of the dumplings.” Kenshin offered a carefully wrapped, wax paper package. “Cold now, but they should still be good.”

Tomoe, meanwhile, had dragged a sweaty and irritable Kenichi to the washroom to clean up. 

Hiko accepted the package of dumplings from Kenshin. They would make for pleasant enough eating later that night when he sat with his sake and gazed up at the stars.

“I don’t see how you can enjoy yourself in this city,” he grumbled. “With everything and everyone crowded in on top of one another.”

“I never had the chance to enjoy Kyoto.” Kenshin seated himself next to Hiko. “Thought I might give Tokyo a fair try.”

“Of course this is going to be pleasant compared to a city where you were fighting a war.” Hiko rolled his eyes. “Your standards are compromised, and that’s putting it mildly.”

“After years of living with you,” Kenshin returned, “anyone’s would be.”

Before Hiko could respond, Otetsudai-san appeared on the engawa, bearing a tray with tea and bowls of small snacks.

She gestured toward the package. “Shall I warm those for you?”

Hiko considered telling the woman that he was perfectly capable of warming dumplings, and that he had cooked his own food for years before Tomoe had arrived at his house, but managed not to venture beyond a curt (yet polite) “No. Thank you.”

Or maybe it hadn’t been polite at all, judging by the look that flitted across her face before she schooled her expression back to polite neutrality. Smoothly she rose to her feet, bowed, and disappeared back into the house.

The woman had worked for Yukishiro for years. Anything above a slight eyebrow twitch probably bordered on monstrously rude. 

He turned his attention back to his idiot apprentice. 

“Cities are inherently unpleasant.” He gestured around. “Just look at this place. They have to build walls to have even the smallest degree of privacy, because they’re clustered together like fish in a net. How can anyone be comfortable in a place like this?”

“You’re clearly very uncomfortable.” Kenshin’s gaze drifted to the gate right as Yukishiro walked through it, followed by Enishi. “But he seems to be adjusting well.”

Hiko snorted. “He grew up here. And besides, he’s in the midst of putting aside his differences with his father. I doubt he considers his cramped surroundings worthy of much attention.”

Kenshin looked at him for a long moment, then reached for a cup of tea. “I guess you could go home, if you’re that uncomfortable. Get that peace and quiet you’re always griping about.”

Hiko had a sudden image of sitting by himself beside the hearth in the newly-rebuilt house on Atago. Of the much larger space around him seeming that much emptier in the absence of his idiot apprentice’s family. Of looking around at the spaces that would have been occupied by Tomoe, or Kenichi, or Enishi, or Kenshin, and finding them empty.

“Count on you to make such an idiotic suggestion,” he snapped. 

Kenshin rolled his eyes, right as Enishi walked up and asked, “Who’s making idiotic suggestions now?”

Hiko snorted. “Who do you think?”

A sudden and unwelcome thought sprang to his mind: What if Enishi decided to remain here? What if Yukishiro, as was certainly his right, wanted his only son to remain with him in the home he was going to inherit?

What if (a feeling approaching dread began to gather in the pit of his stomach) Tomoe decided to stay as well? Then Kenshin would naturally remain, along with Kenichi, and…

And Hiko would have no choice but to stay as well, or to return to Atago alone.

“Did you have an enjoyable afternoon?” Yukishiro left his zori on the stepping stone and climbed onto the engawa, removing his katana from his belt as he did. “The weather has been perfect for sitting on the engawa with tea.”

Hiko’s jaw clenched and unclenched several times, while several choice observations very nearly made it past his lips. In the end, he settled for sitting slightly more upright and facing Yukishiro directly.

“The weather is fine,” he said evenly. “The city is stifling. Nothing but walls everywhere I look.” He gestured around. “It’s been at least a week since I’ve seen a tree or heard the sound of a real river.”

Enishi frowned and gestured toward the back gate. “The canal’s right over there. There are trees.”

Hiko ignored him. “How do people not go insane, so cut off from nature?”

“Obligation and expectation,” Yukishiro replied. “Though the option is always just around the corner, if one knows where to look.” He inclined his head slightly. “If you’ll excuse me…”

He disappeared into the room he used as a study, sliding the shoji closed behind him.

Hiko turned back to his apprentices, his face thunderous. “What did that even mean?”

Enishi scowled, but kept his voice low. “It probably means you’re driving him insane.” He kicked his zori off and stepped onto the engawa. “I told him I’d help tend to our family on the butsudan. Sit here and try not to be stifled by the walls.”

Kenshin snorted into his teacup.

Hiko tried, as his younger apprentice had suggested, not to be stifled by the walls. He made what any reasonable person would have considered a heroic and laudable effort, beyond the capacities of most men. But when he hit his head for the third time on one of the fusuma runners as they went out onto the engawa after dinner that evening, he found that his reservoir of patience had run dry.

“Civilization be damned,” he burst out.

“Indeed, it has its drawbacks,” Yukishiro said with irritating mildness. “My poorly constructed house, unable to accommodate the heights of all my guests, is one of them.”

“Oh, stop it,” Hiko snapped. “What are you apologizing for? I’m a head taller than every single man in this city; your house isn’t any worse suited to my height than anyone else’s. And don’t call it poorly-constructed either; you know for a fact that it’s practically perfect craftsmanship.” 

Yukishiro said nothing to that. 

After a moment, Hiko shook his head and sighed. “I’m not used to being in places like this.” He gestured around. “So many buildings, so many people, and everything fitted tightly together like the joinery of a tansu chest.”

“You’re used to the expansive freedom of a secluded mountain.” Yukishiro looked at him. “Should you like to see a bamboo grove or a river surrounded by hills? Unfortunately I can’t offer both at the same time.”

Hiko’s brows furrowed as he regarded Yukishiro. The man’s face was as inscrutable as ever, and Hiko had no way of telling whether he was joking or not. Then again, he supposed that the joke wouldn’t have worked anyway; if Yukishiro had been offering to show him paintings of a bamboo grove or a mountain river, he could easily have looked at both of them at once.

“The bamboo grove, then,” Hiko said slowly. “But it must be some distance outside the city.”

“A moment then.” 

Yukishiro disappeared into his study. For an aggravated moment, Hiko waited for him to return with a damned scroll or ukiyo-e print, but he stepped back onto the engawa with his daisho, and Hiko felt his jaw unclench.

“Come walk with me, Hiko-kun.”

Hiko’s brows gradually unfurrowed as he realized that Yukishiro was serious. Pulling on his boots and rising to his feet, he picked up his sword from where it sat propped against the wall of the house and slid it into his belt. With one hand, he picked up the wrapped package of dumplings that Kenshin had brought. With the other, he hoisted his sake jug - still more than half full, by some minor miracle.

“It would be my pleasure.”

They were right at the gate when Enishi called out, “Bye, wild mountain man! Bye, scholarly samurai! Try not to stay out too late, and don’t confuse any passersby!”

“Bye bye, Jiji!” Kenichi waved enthusiastically. “Bye bye, Ojiisan!”

Kenshin and Tomoe thankfully kept their mouths shut. 

“Your son’s mouth gets faster every day,” Hiko grumbled. “If his arms and legs kept the same pace, I’d make a master out of him in a year’s time.”

‘If his studies had kept the same pace, perhaps he might have excelled at terakoya.” Yukishiro’s tone was blandly neutral. “Terakoya, unfortunately, did not hold his interest.”

“So I’ve heard.” Hiko snorted with laughter as they walked, turning to look down at Yukishiro as the older man walked beside him. “Made to drink ink for his insolence, and not one additional page of Confucius memorized for the trouble.”

“Ah yes,” Yukishiro mused. “Such a waste of ink. And a waste of the switch too, and perhaps a few folded fans.” He shook his head. “His teachers, regrettably, found my son to be unruly.”

“He’s a young boy,” Hiko replied with another chuckle. “I’ve never heard of a boy who was anything but unruly. Even my idiot apprentice had his little jokes when he was younger.”

The slightest of frowns crossed Yukishiro’s mouth and he stiffened visibly, though he kept walking. For a moment, Hiko wondered what, exactly, he had said to offend the man, and then he noticed the few passersby strolling the neighborhood.

The sidelong glances. The whispers behind hands.

“People around here seem to do a great deal of talking,” Hiko said, not bothering to keep his voice down. He leveled his gaze around at the murmurers, finding few of them willing to meet his eyes for even a fraction of a second. “Particularly about one another.”

“Musashino’s waterwheel has been churning since my children’s homecoming,” Yukishiro said softly. “Perhaps I should have warned you.”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed, and the intensity of his gaze sharpened. As little as he enjoyed Yukishiro’s indirectness, the man had been more than hospitable to them all. And his relief at welcoming his children back home, particularly after the losses he had suffered, should not have been dampened by the wagging tongues of these neighborhood busybodies.

“I can only imagine.” Hiko’s voice carried easily, unlike Yukishiro’s soft undertone. “I wonder how much less of it would reach your ears if they actually spoke to you directly?”

Yukishiro was silent.

Before long, they had left the winding streets of Musashino behind them. The cobblestone streets gave way to well-trodden dirt roads alongside canals lined with weeping willows. A distant furin chime pinged delicately on the light breeze, and the unmistakable _clonk_ of a shishi-odoshi emptying water into a fountain seemed to echo in the early-evening stillness.

Hiko felt a distinct sense of relaxation begin to tug at his extremities at the familiar and soothing sights and sounds.

“The sounds of the forest are like sake to me,” he said after a deep and cleansing breath. “Always welcome, always delicious, and always soothing.”

“There is beauty to be found all over Edo.” Yukishiro shook his head. “Or Tokyo, as we’re now meant to call it. One need only walk a bit outside our walls.”

They passed a series of large, wooden torii painted vibrant red, but instead of walking through them, Yukishiro led Hiko past them, further and further away from Musashino and the crowded city until the dirt road narrowed into a path, and the path gave way to leaf litter crunching softly underfoot. 

Stepping into the bamboo grove was like stepping into some sacred temple. 

The noise of the city, already muted by the distance they had walked from the crowded samurai district, seemed to melt away as Hiko took his first steps into the dark green shade. The tall boles, some as thick around as his massive upper arms, some as slender and delicate as his little finger, stretched up to tower over their heads and spread out into an indistinguishable distance.

Hiko exhaled slowly and gratefully as the grove embraced him, the dusty and crowded city feeling comfortable leagues away. The light of the setting sun slanted down through tiny gaps in the roof of leaves, tinted varying shades of green on its way down to him. And for a long moment, he simply stood and allowed it to soak into his soul.

“Thank you,” he said finally, turning to Yukishiro and inclining his head. “In all seriousness.”

He gestured toward a flat rock some steps away, and when the two of them were seated on it, uncorked his sake jug and offered it to Yukishiro.

Yukishiro hesitated a moment, then shrugged almost imperceptibly before accepting the jug and swigging a generous mouthful. He passed the jug back to Hiko with a nod, and Hiko took a deep drink of his own before setting the jug back down on the stone beside him.

“I know it’s not as fine as yours,” Hiko sighed, turning his gaze upward to the leafy ceiling. “But a place like this makes even the lowest-quality sake taste good enough for anyone.”

He smiled as his mind drifted back to what he’d once told Kenshin about sake. That each season brought its own simple and beautiful reason to enjoy sake, and that any perceived imperfections in the taste of the sake were merely imperfections in the heart of the drinker.

He wondered if Yukishiro had ever considered such a thing.

“It is said that ‘sake reveals the true heart’,” Yukishiro mused. “Perhaps, then, the relative quality of the sake matters not so much.”

“If sake reveals the true heart, then everyone would benefit from drinking more of it.” Hiko gave a snort of mirth, swigged another mouthful, and handed the jug back to Yukishiro. “It would save a great deal of time, effort, and irritation. On my part, at least.”

Yukishiro glanced at him. “You wish for people to be more plain-spoken then? Such things are not society’s way.” He took a drink and passed the jug back. “But then, with this new government, perhaps all the old customs will go the way of the Shogun.”

“I should be so lucky,” Hiko grumbled. 

He paused for a moment, regarding Yukishiro. The man was so swathed in layers of custom himself that he never managed to say what he actually meant. But perhaps there was a way to get through to him.

“Hasn’t it ever struck you that things would be far less complicated if people simply said what they meant? If there was no need to couch everything so deeply in formality and protocol that matters were only ever hinted at instead of addressed?” He drank and handed Yukishiro the jug once more. “It would certainly mean that a man would know who meant him well and who did not.”

The faintest of smiles crossed Yukishiro’s lips. “A man need not speak his mind aloud in order for others to know if he wishes them well or not.” Another drink, and again the jug was handed over.

“Yes, well.” Hiko frowned. “Your neighbors certainly seemed averse to speaking their minds in anything but a whisper.” 

That hint of a smile vanished from Yukishiro’s mouth.

Hiko turned to regard him directly. “You seem a decent enough man. You’ve raised two fine children, and you showed hospitality to me and my idiot apprentice when we arrived on your doorstep unannounced. As far as I can see, your neighbors have no reason to look down on you. So why the whispering?”

Yukishiro took a breath. 

After a long moment, and very quietly, he said, “My beloved daughter regrettably learned too much in mannerisms and behavior from her unworthy father.” 

A beat passed between them. Hiko resisted the urge to speak.

“After her fiance’s unfortunate passing, the neighbors were… unkind.” Yukishiro shook his head. Closed his eyes. “To her.” A low sigh escaped his lips. “She is my only living daughter, and I… could not tolerate such things from those who were meant to be our friends.”

“She told me everything, not long after my idiot apprentice brought her up the mountain.” Hiko sighed. “She blamed it on herself. Even now, after her husband and her brother and I have all tried to convince her otherwise, I think a part of her still imagines she’s to blame.” 

He shook his head, then turned to Yukishiro with firmness in his eyes. “But you were right not to tolerate that sort of pettiness from them. I wouldn’t have shown nearly the degree of restraint that you have.”

He held out the jug again.

“Well,” Yukishiro murmured, before taking another swig, “I do have to live here.”

“Which is why I live on top of a mountain.” Hiko snorted. “I hate people in general. Though certain individuals tend not to be so bad.” He arched an eyebrow at Yukishiro. “Speaking of which, how is it that that young girl’s father remains your friend?”

“You mean Kaoru-chan’s father?” At Hiko’s nod, Yukishiro continued. “Kamiya-kun is a rare man. He’s teaching Kaoru-chan the sword style that he created - Kamiya Kasshin Ryu. The sword that protects life.” Another small smile. “As you might imagine, he is something of an outlier in Musashino.”

Hiko’s eyebrows shot up at that. A swordsman teaching his style to a girl was an outlier not only in Musashino, but likely in the world. Hiko certainly would never have dreamed of teaching a girl Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

“I’m surprised he thinks she has the temperament for it,” he mused. 

“Kamiya-kun believes girls are just as capable of learning,” Yukishiro murmured. “And Kaoru-chan has proven to take it very seriously.”

“That may be.” Hiko took another sip of sake. “It might be interesting to meet a fellow swordsman.”

Even if Kamiya’s style could not compare to Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu - which it certainly could not - there were always things to be learned from watching a master practitioner of a different school. And Kamiya’s daughter had been pleasant enough, though loud and active in a way Hiko would not have expected from a girl.

Perhaps she had learned that from her father, just as Tomoe had learned her aloof demeanor from Yukishiro.

“And so you and Kamiya bonded over being fellow outcasts?” He held out the jug again to Yukishiro with a chuckle. “I suppose there are worse ways to forge a friendship.”

The jug passed back and forth between them twice more in silence, as Hiko contemplated the notion of a man such as Yukishiro pursuing the same solitude as he himself had pursued. Their methods had been quite different, of course, and their circumstances entirely so, but their reasoning had concurred in at least one way: their fellow men were, by and large, a disappointment.

Yet they had both gathered odd people to them. And though Hiko was loath to admit it - and would certainly never have done so aloud - he believed they would both do everything in their power to keep those people from drifting away again. 

From leaving them alone.

At some point, Hiko remembered the neatly-wrapped package of dumplings which sat beside him. Tearing it open, he proffered it to Yukishiro, and when they had each taken one, he set the package down within easy reach of both of them.

“Shrimp,” he muttered, chewing appreciatively. “Something we never find on Mount Atago.”

Yukishiro hummed in response, though once he was finished chewing, said, “One might imagine that many comforts that are easy to come by in Edo - or Tokyo, of course - would be more difficult to find on top of a mountain.”

“And vice versa.” Hiko paused, frowning slightly. “Though I’ll have to concede that you do have the far more comfortable bathtub.”

“My son told me that you force him to bathe in a freezing cold stream.” Yukishiro plucked another dumpling out of the package. “Though, of course, he has been known to embellish things for dramatic effect.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous.” Hiko waved a hand dismissively. “I make him run in the stream. There’s a difference.”

“And waist-deep snow.”

“It didn’t kill my idiot apprentice,” Hiko scowled, reaching for another dumpling. “Your son just enjoys complaining.”

“He does at that.” A faint smile ghosted across Yukishiro’s mouth. “Himura-kun is the most feared and notorious hitokiri in our country’s recent memory, and yet you refer to him as an idiot.” He shook his head. “His filial relationship versus his public image are a wonder to consider.”

Yukishiro’s use of the word _filial_ was best left unremarked-upon, though it did cause Hiko’s stomach to twist uncomfortably. To avoid having to address it - or even to think about its implications - he took refuge in the rest of what Yukishiro had said.

“I refer to him as an idiot because he is one,” he grumbled. “He would never have become a hitokiri if he’d listened to me in the first place.”

And yet, a small but insistent voice whispered in the back of his mind, if Kenshin had not gone down the mountain, he would never have met Tomoe. The pair of them would never have brought back Enishi. Kenichi would never have been born. He and his idiot apprentice would have remained up on the mountain until the apprenticeship had ended at last in the only way it could have, and then…

Hiko found that he could not bear to go any farther down that path in his mind.

“Ah.” Yukishiro reached for another dumpling.

Hiko’s expression soured as he realized that Yukishiro was again employing his impenetrable inscrutability. Stuffing another dumpling into his mouth, he chewed irritably as he tried with all his might to avoid the issue of his relationship with his idiot apprentice.

“It’s true,” he grumbled. “He wanted to satisfy his idealism, and so he abandoned his training and left to join the Kiheitai. Apparently someone recruited him rather quickly as a hitokiri, and the rest…” Hiko spread his hands. “Well, we all know the rest.”

He sighed. “But now, he’s sworn a vow never to take another life.”

Yukishiro hummed in response to that, and Hiko was about to snap at him to actually speak his mind, when he said, “Himura-kun is not at all what I expected. For one, he’s so much…”

Hiko raised an eyebrow. “Shorter?”

“Well… yes,” Yukishiro admitted. “The broadsheets I had occasion to see clearly embellished… much… about him.”

“Embellished?” Hiko snorted. “Apart from his hair color, they fabricated everything about him. From his height to his skills, they managed to get everything wrong.” He paused, then smirked. “Of course, that was probably because no one who faced him ever survived long enough to describe him properly.”

“Yes,” Yukishiro said softly. “I know that much.”

Of course he did, Hiko thought with a rush of bitterness that surprised him momentarily. Yukishiro knew, just as Tomoe knew, and for the same reason.

“But I also know that he loves my daughter very much,” Yukishiro continued. “Even the way he looks at her makes that abundantly clear.”

Hiko nodded, smirking as he did so, “He never did have any trouble expressing his feelings.” The smile slipped a notch as he recalled the argument that had led to Kenshin walking away from the house and into the war that would change everything. 

“Sometimes very loudly.”

“Well, he was raised on an isolated mountain with only the trees for neighbors.” Abruptly Yukishiro stood. “Come, Hiko-kun, we should head back. We’re sitting in darkness, and regrettably I did not think to bring a lantern.”

Hiko squinted around in surprise. Up on Atago, he’d become so used to sitting outside the house at night with pleasant conversation around him and the moon and stars for light that he hadn’t noticed the fact that night had fallen.

Yukishiro’s words, though, brought a scowl to his face. “I didn’t think of the lantern either, you know,” he grumbled. “No need to shoulder all the blame yourself.”

The scowl disappeared as he put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up to his feet. “But perhaps we should bring one along next time.”

And as he followed Yukishiro out of the bamboo forest and back towards the city, the sake jug swinging from the fingers of his left hand considerably lighter than it had been on the walk there, he found himself hoping that there would indeed be a next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES! ALL THE NOTES THAT ARE FIT TO PRINT!
> 
> Hiya, Bat-fam, welcome back and Happy New Year. May the year of our Lord 2021 be less of a trash fire than 2020. From my lips to God's ears, as the saying goes. Anyway, let's have some cultural notes.
> 
> The brothel name, Hanakotoba, means "the language of flowers" which is a super Japanese concept about flowers being symbolically connected to a whole range of subtle meanings. All the oiran at that brothel would have flower-themed names. (Not the kamuro girls, who would just have cute matchy-matchy names.) The shinzou - which were like oiran-in-training, and yes, they participated in sex work - would have flower names too, but not as ELABORATE as the oiran names.
> 
> Yumi's oiran name, Hanahomura, means 'fiery flower.' Watsuki came up with that oiran name, not me, so it's not my fault Yumi's name is a little too on-the-nose for her relationship with Shishio. WHATEVER, MAN. 
> 
> As for Tomoe raising eyebrows at Yumi's chosen surname of Komagata. It's a pun. It's a horrible pun. I'm groaning as I write this, because Watsuki gave Yumi a shitty pun name. Komagata is a play on 'koma-geta,' which were the special, super tall, laquered sandals that oiran wore during processionals with their attendants. Google them. They were considered ridiculously erotic, only oiran ever wore them, and they only wore them for those processionals, because they're impossible to walk in without help.
> 
> So yes, Komagata Yumi essentially means 'courtesan sandals Yumi.' Thanks, Watsuki. Thanks for that. Again, I say WHATEVER, MAN.
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND
> 
> Anyway, it's good to be back. Drop me some comments. Tell me about your New Year. Talk to me about the characters. I always love hearing from you, even if this story just forced me to explain terrible Japanese puns to y'all.


	27. Antics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITTY BITTY GLOSSARY  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Kamuro girl : child assistants of oiran, between 5-11 years old  
> Shinzou : oiran-in-training. Yes, they took customers  
> Fusuma : sliding room dividers, often painted or decorated. Different from shoji, which are used around the perimeter of a house, to open it to the outside  
> Terakoya : temple school, taught by samurai or Buddhist priests, required for the children of samurai  
> Bozu : term of endearment for little boys  
> Erabitori ceremony: “pick and keep an item” ceremony on baby’s 1st birthday  
> Otetsudai-san : literally ‘Ms. Housekeeper’

**Founding year of Meiji  
(October 1868)**

The days passed quietly.

One blessedly peaceful and largely uneventful day after another, until the days blurred into weeks. The trees were streaked in vibrant hues of orange and red and even purple, the daylight seemed to slip away much faster, and the evenings grew chillier. 

Kenshin spent quite a bit of time on the engawa, cup of tea in hand, breathing in the crisp scent of autumn and luxuriating in the fact that he had nothing pressing to do with his time.

“Play tag with Kenichi and Kaoru-chan, Touchan!” Kenichi demanded. “Touchan, come play!”

Nothing pressing to do, but certainly his time was filled in other ways. 

Slowly, their family seemed to find their way toward equilibrium. 

Yukishiro-san, perhaps content that Kenshin was not the seven-shaku-tall flying demon of the broadsheets, finally seemed to exhale a bit. Nightly shogi games had once again become routine, as they had been on Mount Atago, only now Kenshin and Hiko had to contend with not only losing to Tomoe, but losing spectacularly to her father as well.

Sometimes in only a handful of face-crushing moves. 

“I’m still not sure how this game is meant to mimic battle strategy,” Hiko grumbled as he reset the board yet again. “If it bore any resemblance to an actual battle, I wouldn’t be losing constantly.”

Enishi crunched loudly on a very crisp apple. “Yeah, how many battles have you actually been in?” He jerked a thumb toward Kenshin. “He’s the veteran, not you.”

Kenshin, deciding he was too smart to engage this time, sipped his tea calmly.

Hiko and Enishi, perhaps also sensing that Yukishiro-san wasn’t going to put a stop to Enishi’s apprenticeship, picked up their training again, sometimes in the bamboo grove, sometimes by the river, but more often than not in the courtyard.

“I don’t mind if you kick my son,” Yukishiro-san remarked from the engawa, “but do mind the rock garden. It takes hours to rake properly.”

Enishi glowered up at him from the dirt. “Thanks, Otousan.”

Hiko tapped his bokutou against his shoulder and smirked. “Your father has his priorities in order.” He beckoned lazily with his left hand. “So try to land somewhere more appropriate next time.”

Kenshin and Tomoe returned to Yoshiwara, this time with Kenichi in tow, and the women of the Hanakotoba wasted no time in lavishing him with attention and far too many sweets, all between cries of “So cute! He’s so cute!”

Eventually though, Yumi led Tomoe toward the stairs. “I’m going to dress you up like a Hinamatsuri doll on an empress’s shelf.” 

Tomoe’s eyes lit up. It looked as though she was exerting a great deal of effort to rein in the urge to bounce up and down with anticipation and keep her facial expression composed.

“I would enjoy that very much,” she said finally.

Over her shoulder, Yumi added, “This will take a while, Himura-san. I suggest you explore Yoshiwara.” She winked at Tomoe. “Under escort, of course. Kanomo-chan and Konomo-chan will show you around.”

As if on cue, the two kamuro girls that Kenshin now recognized as Yumi’s personal attendants appeared before him, dressed in identical, brightly patterned kimono and sporting identical eager grins.

“Don’t worry, Oniisan,” one of them chirped. “Kanomo-chan-”

“And Konomo-chan!”

“Will take care of you!”

They tugged him by his sleeves toward the door, Kenshin faltering long enough to call for Kenichi to come with him.

Kenichi looked up from where he was sitting on the lap of one girl perhaps no older than Enishi, while another girl fed him a piece of sweet bean manju.

“Kenichi stay here, Touchan!”

Judging by the girls’ unanimous, cooing assents, that wouldn’t be even the slightest bit of a problem, and so Kenshin let Kanomo-chan and Konomo-chan lead him out onto the street.

Of course, the girls knew Yoshiwara very well, and they wasted no time dragging Kenshin to what they considered to be all the best spots, including an arched bridge fringed by weeping willows that draped into the canal (“A very romantic place, Oniisan!”), a high-end kimono shop run by an ancient artisan (“Kanomo-chan wants one when she becomes a shinzou!”), a tea shop where the girls traded jokes with the hostess over tea (“We’re showing Oniisan around because Hanahomura-dono thinks he has no sense of direction!”), and a sweets shop (“The daifuku is _so_ good, Oniisan!”).

Of course he bought them a daifuku each, along with one for himself. And the girls were right; it was pretty tasty, and so he bought them all one more.

“We should bring a box of daifuku back, Oniisan,” Kanomo suggested.

Konomo nodded in eager agreement. “Your wife and Kenichi-kun will like them too!”

“Fucking lying whores!”

The angry, drunken snarl exploded from the brothel to their left. Kenshin stiffened; he had heard the raised voices earlier, but paid them no mind, but now multiple voices dissolved into angry shouting.

Kanomo frowned. “We should leave, Oniisan.”

Deep, guttural male voices rose in volume, followed by a female scream of terror, and then the clear sound of a hand striking flesh and multiple bodies being thrown into furniture or through fusuma. 

“This happens sometimes, Oniisan.” Konomo tugged at Kenshin’s sleeve. “We should go.”

The brothel door exploded off its tracks in a shower of broken wood and splinters. A man, red-faced and clearly drunk, dragged a sobbing woman into the dusty street. He was followed by a crowd of what were most likely his friends, judging by their sneering faces and raucous laughter. An older woman, possibly the brothel owner, stumbled after them, hands clasped together, pleading words Kenshin couldn’t quite hear. 

Kanomo grabbed Kenshin’s hand. “Let’s go back to the Hanakotoba now.”

A pair of burly men came through the doors after the troublemakers and the obasan, shoving aside the hangers-on to get at the ringleader, and Kenshin saw it unfold as if in painted scrolls, hung one beside the other.

One of the men that the brothel guards had shoved out of the way reached into his kimono. His hand came out holding an unsheathed tanto dagger.

Several onlookers, the kamuro girls included, shouted a warning. 

The guard turned his head just in time for the tanto blade to plunge deep into his back.

Time seemed to return to its normal flow as the badly wounded guard uttered a gurgling cry, collapsing to the dusty street while reaching behind his shoulder as if trying to scratch an unreachable itch. Blood fountained from the wound high on his back, staining the light beige of his kimono a deep rust color and soaking into the dust.

The obasan screamed. The sobbing woman cowered, wrapping her arms around her head. Some of the men pulled knives out of their kimono, but the ringleader unsheathed a sword and grabbed the sobbing woman by her collar. 

“This bitch needs to be taught a lesson,” the man growled. “Nobody fucks with Ito Riichi, especially not some lying, cheap whore.” He raised his sword. 

“Take the money then!” The obasan grabbed frantically at his sleeve. “Just take the money and go!”

Ito spat in the old woman’s face.

Kenshin narrowed his eyes, took a breath, and stepped into the fray. 

“All right,” he said steadily, though he kept his hand at the hilt of his sword. “Enough.”

Ito turned his head in surprise to look at Kenshin, then laughed in a singularly unpleasant way. 

“How old are you, boy?” he snorted, gesturing with his sword at Kenshin. “I have tabi socks taller than you.”

He turned back to the sobbing woman on the ground and leered. “Get ready to be worth a lot less, whore. Maybe you can scrub the floors for a living now, since no one will want you with a face full of scars.” He raised his sword. 

Kenshin sprang forward, covering the distance between himself and Ito in a blur, and swept his sword from its sheath to intercept Ito’s with a high, ringing note.

“Leave,” he said in a flat voice, eyes narrowed and fixed squarely on Ito’s. “Now.”

Ito blinked in surprise, then spat out a string of obscenities and lashed out with a kick.

Kenshin leapt straight upward, his sword still locked with Ito’s, his powerful legs launching him easily higher than Ito’s head and forcing the drunken man to stumble backwards. He tripped over his own feet, sprawling on his backside with his legs over his head, and Kenshin landed lightly beside him. 

Several people in the crowd laughed nervously.

“Get him!” Ito raged from the ground, fumbling to cover himself and get to his feet.

Kyoto flashed before Kenshin’s eyes. He was surrounded by armed men in a city street, and the lives of innocents were on the line. 

It would be so easy…

But these men were not soldiers. They were drunken brawlers. It would not take the likes of Battousai to defeat them.

Kenshin sensed the approach of two of Ito’s friends from behind him and turned smoothly to strike both of them with a sweeping blow at stomach level. With his old sword, he would have cut the pair of them in two easily. Instead, they folded like paper fans and collapsed to the ground.

Another man, attacking from the side, got a blow to his unprotected ribs that knocked him clear off his feet and into a knot of onlookers, who shrieked and scattered. Kenshin pivoted and whipped the sakabatou across to intercept a fourth man who held his blade backhanded for a stab. There was a sound like cracking ice as the man’s wrist broke, and the knife spun away, the man falling to his knees and whimpering a string of curses. 

“Kill him!” Ito screamed to his two remaining comrades, but Kenshin cut off their clumsy charge with a hard blow from the hilt of his sword to the pit of the first one’s stomach. He shoved the gasping man aside, pivoting into a spin, and smashed the steel sheath across the bridge of the last man’s nose.

Ito raised his sword in both hands, his sake-reddened face a mask of rage, but his blow never even came close to landing.

Kenshin planted both feet on the back of the man he’d hit in the stomach, springing off of him high into the air and coming down with a two-handed blow - his old favorite, the Ryutsuisen.

The blunt edge of the sakabatou met the sharp edge of Ito’s sword and shattered it like glass. And without pausing, Kenshin snapped out a backhanded blow that struck Ito hard across the sternum, breaking several ribs with an audible crack. 

His gaze never leaving Ito’s, Kenshin resheathed his sword, the ringing snap as tsuba met sheath reverberating out across the now-silent street. 

“I told you to leave.” The words were said very quietly. He wasn’t used to talking to his opponents after the fight had concluded.

Ito’s mouth quivered feebly, as if to respond, but his eyes rolled back into his head and his body went slack in the dirt a moment later. 

As the tension of the confrontation ebbed away, Kenshin became aware of an excited hubbub surrounding him. There were murmurs from the crowd, the pressing-in of bodies around him, and… applause?

“That was wonderful!” came a shout from somewhere to his left. “You saved that poor woman!” came another yell from behind him. “Let me buy you a drink!” a man called out right in front of him.

His eyes widened slightly.

This, he was also not used to. The daylight confrontation. The oddly cheering crowds. The grinning faces. This was not something he knew how to deal with, and he felt the sudden urge to turn and flee.

Patrol whistles in the distance merely solidified that desire.

Kanomo and Konomo were at his side suddenly, tugging at his sleeves and murmuring, “This way, Oniisan. We know a shortcut.”

He followed them through a winding series of back alleys and sidestreets that eventually dumped them out right by the Hanakotoba. 

“That was so amazing, Oniisan!” Kanomo said breathlessly, cheeks pink and hair mussed. 

Kenshin frowned. “What was?” 

Konomo bounced on her heels, wooden geta clacking against the ground. “The way you stood up to those men, Oniisan.”

“Fights happen sometimes,” Kanomo added, “at the lower class brothels. Not at the Hanakotoba.”

“Not at the Hanakotoba,” Konomo repeated. “But no one-”

“No one!”

“-ever stands up to those kinds of men when it happens.”

The girls beamed up at him.

Kenshin didn’t know what to say to any of that.

...

The girls led him inside the Hanakotoba, where he was greeted by the sight of several young women chasing a madly giggling Kenichi around the tearoom. 

When Kenichi spotted him, he ran over, wrapped his arms around one of Kenshin’s legs, and grinned up at him.

“Touchan! Kenichi eat _so_ many sweets!”

“Because you’re so sweet, Kenichi-kun,” one of the young women giggled, which was followed by a flurry of giggles from all the women.

Yumi appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ah, Himura-san, I thought I heard you come in. You may come up now.”

“Bye, Touchan!” Kenichi called after him. “Kenichi eat more sweets now!”

“Did you have a pleasant tour?” Yumi asked lightly, as Kenshin followed her down the hallway. “Were Konomo-chan and Kanomo-chan worthy guides?” 

“Very.” He wouldn’t mention the fight. It would only worry Yumi unnecessarily. “Very persuasive as well.”

“They talked you into buying them daifuku, didn’t they?” Yumi stopped at her door and giggled. “They have a sweets shop they favor. I’m surprised they didn’t convince you to bring back a whole box.”

“They tried-” Kenshin started, and then Yumi slid the fusuma aside and all thoughts of the fight and the daifuku and everything else fell away.

Tomoe stood just inside the doorway. 

She was robed in many layers, from a startlingly red kimono to a sky-blue one embroidered with a cascade of chrysanthemum flowers. Draped over her clasped hands was the trailing end of a long obi bearing the image of a coiled dragon amongst billowing clouds. Her face was delicately painted, her eyes highlighted starkly against the whiteness of her cheeks and her lips an arresting blood-red. An elaborately waxed and style wig, its eight tortoiseshell pins perfectly placed, sat on her head.

Kenshin found it suddenly impossible to speak.

Perhaps Tomoe felt the same way. The silence stretched between them, one infinite heartbeat after another, until Yumi cut in with a gentle:

“What do you think, Himura-san?”

Kenshin looked at her, eyes widening slightly, and Yumi smiled.

“Did you forget I was here, Himura-san?”

“Maybe,” he admitted, and finally stepped across the threshold and reached for his wife, before pulling back, suddenly hesitant. “I’m afraid I might wrinkle you if I touch you.”

The smallest and shyest of smiles flitted across Tomoe’s face. “I’m afraid to move for fear of wrinkling this outfit. It’s grander than anything I’ve ever even imagined wearing.”

“Kanomo-chan and Konomo-chan send out all of my kimono for regular cleaning.” Yumi waved the thought away. “So don’t worry about it. Move all you like. In fact…” A mischievous sparkle danced across her eyes. “I understand the two of you have never had a private room together.”

Kenshin looked at his wife, brows lifting slightly. Just what had they talked about while he had been out with the kamuro girls?

The layer of paint on Tomoe’s face masked the flush of her skin, but after so many years, Kenshin knew that look well. She looked down, then lifted her eyes shyly. “Well, we haven’t.”

“And you’ve been away at war for years, Himura-san.” Yumi touched him gently on the arm. “The two of you should get reacquainted with each other, don’t you think?”

Before Kenshin could decide if he wanted to ask what, exactly, she meant by that, Yumi smiled brightly and said, “There’s something I remembered that I simply must take care of, and it will take me an hour to do so,” before sliding the fusuma shut behind them and padding softly down the hallway.

A long moment ensued as Tomoe slowly dragged her gaze upward from the floor to meet Kenshin’s eyes, still clearly blushing beneath the carefully-applied paint. 

“She’s very kind,” she murmured. “And thoughtful.” She lifted a hand covered with a billowing sleeve to her mouth as though she had said something scandalous.

“She laid out the futon,” Kenshin noted, then felt his face burn. As if he were fifteen again and newly-wed.

“We’ve never had a futon in a private room,” Tomoe said. An instant later, her eyes widened and she hastily buried her face in her sleeve-covered hands. Muffled sounds issued from beneath.

Kenshin reached for Tomoe’s hands, ended up with fistfuls of very expensive sleeves, but gently lowered her hands from her face all the same.

“We have an hour to ourselves,” he murmured. “We can do whatever you like. We could just sit and enjoy the quiet.”

“We could,” replied Tomoe in a murmur of her own, though she drifted toward him until the gap closed between them.

Her lips met his with a feathery lightness, and her hands strayed to his hakama, fingers deftly unknotting the tie with practiced ease. The last thought that flitted through Kenshin’s mind as Tomoe led him across the room by his loosened hakama ties was that the gift of a futon and an hour’s worth of time was all he wanted just then.

…  
…

“I suppose I started the school before the war, but really I was just giving lessons in my courtyard.” Kamiya set his empty sake saucer down, only for Yukishiro to promptly refill it. “And sometimes guest lessons at other dojo around town.”

Sitting on the engawa and drinking sake with Kamiya and Yukishiro had been the perfect way to pass an otherwise uneventful afternoon, in Hiko’s opinion. His relationship with Yukishiro had become considerably less strained in the previous weeks, and Kamiya had proven to be a pleasant fellow as well. 

With the added benefit of being a man with whom he could discuss the finer points of swordsmanship, of course.

“How do you find the other dojo?” Hiko tossed back the last of his own sake and settled back against a post. “Considering that the notion of a sword that protects life is apparently ‘not bushido’, that is.”

Kamiya smiled at the mention of his daughter’s words and then refilled Hiko and Yukishiro’s sake saucers in turn. “All Edo samurai are required to learn kenjutsu before coming of age.”

“Though perhaps some take it to heart more than others,” Yukishiro mused.

“True.” Kamiya shrugged. “But you get to know who’s who quickly enough, and the good dojo are always looking for more teachers.”

“I suppose they must be.” Hiko lifted his sake saucer to his mouth, breathed in the aroma, and sipped leisurely. “But establishing your own dojo seems only fitting when your objective is to teach your own style.” He frowned. “I can’t see how you managed to tolerate teaching someone else’s style to pupils after having developed your own.”

Another smile, more self-deprecating this time, flitted across Kamiya’s lips. “You have to establish something of a reputation as a worthwhile teacher before students are willing to take a chance on your own style.” He glanced over at Yukishiro. “And Yukishiro-kun is helping me to codify the whole thing.”

Yukishiro sipped at his own sake. “I’m merely transcribing your words as you give them to me.”

“Including the part where I suggested taking a break for tea,” Kamiya said.

“Yes.” Yukishiro’s mouth twitched in the suggestion of a smile. “Including that part.”

Hiko arched an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re writing a book on the style?”

The concept was interesting. He had naturally read the _Go Rin No Sho_ , and found it fascinating to glimpse the mind of such a master swordsman as Musashi. However, the book itself was clearly intended to be read only by a master, as it focused mainly on concepts rather than individual techniques. He wondered whether Kamiya’s book was the same.

“I think I might wish to read it,” he mused.

Kamiya exchanged a glance with Yukishiro, brows lifting in what seemed to be pleasant surprise. 

“I would be honored, but right now it lacks anything approaching organization.” He shook his head. “Yukishiro-kun is correct in that he’s in the unfortunate position of transcribing my rambling streams of consciousness.”

“You esteem your words too poorly, Kamiya-kun,” Yukishiro murmured. “I’ve learned quite a bit from your streams of consciousness.”

“The both of you need to stop pushing your own heads into the mud,” Hiko muttered. He tossed back the rest of his sake and gave the pair of them a glower.

“You’ve created your own style of kenjutsu and seen its effectiveness in battle.” He gazed severely at Kamiya before turning to regard Yukishiro. “And you’re easily the most educated man I’ve ever met. So the both of you can allow yourselves a little pride.”

The two men exchanged another glance, and then Kamiya smiled and said, “So what’s living on a mountain away from society like?”

Hiko couldn’t help the snort of laughter that came out at that. “At times, extremely pleasant,” he replied with a smirk. “Society cares as little for me as I care for it, so it’s worked out well thus far.”

He refilled Kamiya and Yukishiro’s sake saucers all the same.

The front gate opened, and Tomoe entered holding Kenichi’s hand. Kamiya’s daughter skipped in after them, Enishi came after her, and Kenshin followed behind, pulling the gate shut behind them.

Kamiya smiled. “Seems the gang’s all here.”

“Otouchan!” Kaoru exclaimed, right as Kenichi shouted “Jiji!” Both of them ran straight for the engawa.

“I was on my way home from terakoya,” Kaoru said without preamble, practically bouncing out of her wooden geta, “and I thought I’d stop by to teach Kenichi-kun another game-”

“Kenichi want to play!” 

“-and I saw Tomoe-oneesan and Kenshin-san, and they already had Kenichi-kun with them, and then Enishi-kun turned up too, so I followed them here, and here you are!” She seemed to abruptly remember her fine Edo manners and hastily bowed to Yukishiro and Hiko in turn. “Oh, and hello, Yukishiro-ojiisan. Hiko-san.”

“Kenichi eat so many sweets!” the boy added. 

“Is that so?” Hiko arched an eyebrow at his grandson even as he reached down to ruffle the boy’s hair. “And what made your mother and father agree to let you have that many sweets, bozu?”

“Because,” Kenichi pointed a chubby little finger at his own nose, “Kenichi is _so_ sweet!”

Kenshin and Tomoe exchanged a smile.

Hiko snorted and gave Kenishi’s hair one last ruffle, then turned his attention to Kenshin and Tomoe. “The boy’s going to be as round as a pumpkin if he keeps this up.” He put on a thoughtful, speculative look. “I suppose I’ll just have to start his training earlier, is all.”

Kenshin very pointedly nudged Enishi forward. “You already have him.”

“Yeah.” Enishi scowled. “You already have me.”

Kamiya watched with interest, while Yukishiro merely sipped at his sake.

Hiko pushed down hard on the thought of how exactly he was going to handle the end of his multiple apprenticeships. It was a train of thought he found himself incapable of pursuing while surrounded by his idiot apprentice’s family.

“Your nephew chose the bokutou at his erabitori ceremony,” Hiko pointed out to his scowling second apprentice. “Perhaps he’ll prove to be a prodigy.”

“He chose everything at his erabitori ceremony,” Tomoe said serenely. “He merely played with the bokutou the longest.”

“Which clearly shows which one he was most interested in.” Point proven, Hiko gave Enishi a superior look.

Enishi screwed up his face, but before he could make what he likely thought was a very cutting retort, Kaoru said, “Is it a competition though?”

“It sounds as if you’re saying there can only be one student at any given time,” Kamiya added.

“That was the case.” Kenshin eased his sword from his belt and settled on the engawa. Kenichi promptly climbed into his lap, and Tomoe seated herself next to the both of them. “Thankfully, for all involved, that rule has since been discarded.”

“Three hundred years of tradition broken,” Enishi said proudly, “because of me.”

Hiko rolled his eyes. “If your head gets any more inflated, you’ll float away.”

But his younger apprentice was at least partially correct. 

Hiko had broken three hundred years’ worth of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu tradition - and why? To reach out to a boy whose anger would have consumed him and everyone around him otherwise? To fill the void left by the absence of his first apprentice, who had made the decision to use the style to protect all those who lived in a country being torn apart by greed and power-madness? To force himself to find a solution to the succession of the style, the dilemma of which made him lie awake late into the night with thoughts that grew darker as the night did?

Whatever the reason, he had done it. 

And he was not the only one who had broken with tradition, he reminded himself as he looked at the enigmatic sword lying on the engawa beside his idiot apprentice. He had found himself dwelling on that sword and its self-contradictory nature more and more often lately. It was fascinating - or maddening, depending upon his mood at any given time.

Perhaps the sword was similar to his dilemma. And perhaps the answer lay there as well.

…  
…

They ended up having a pleasant dinner with the Kamiya family. 

Otetsudai-san prepared a perfect autumn meal of grilled fish, chestnut rice, and simmered kabocha squash (paired with miso soup and pickles, of course), and the weather was pleasantly crisp enough that they kept the shoji wide open while they ate, then retired onto the engawa with tea and freshly peeled persimmons.

The persimmons were wonderfully ripe, bursting with a tangy, cinnamon-sweetness, and Kenshin would have been content to sit there and indulge in an entire bowl of them, only Kenichi and Kaoru very quickly roped him into playing tag with them.

Kaoru somehow managed to convince Enishi to play too, which seemed the greater achievement.

It was all so… perfect.

That evening in the bath, Kenshin might have liked to think further on the events of the day - the sakabatou had _worked_ , he _could_ use Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu without ever taking another life - but having an active three year old boy in the bath with him - “Kenichi is fish, Touchan! Look!” - made it very hard to indulge in any serious rumination.

But it _had_ worked. 

“This was such a nice day,” Tomoe murmured, once they were all bundled up in their respective futon and the lanterns had been blown out. “We’ll have to visit Yumi-san again soon.”

“You just want her to dress you up again,” Kenshin teased, reaching out and running his fingers through a stray lock of Tomoe’s hair.

Tomoe caught his hand and entwined her fingers with his. “Well... I wouldn’t say no to that.”

Sleep came only moments later...

Kenshin snapped into instant alertness the moment he felt Kenichi squidge out of Tomoe’s futon, but it was only through deliberate effort that he didn’t grab his sword and sit up.

The high, full moon glowed through the shoji, striping the room in light and shadow, and though there was no clock in the room, it was obviously very late. Kenichi’s movements had awoken Tomoe too, though she eyed their son with bleary watchfulness.

Kenichi climbed bodily over Kenshin and nudged the elaborately painted fusuma open wide enough for a little boy to slip through. He climbed over Enishi, who grunted in annoyance but otherwise stayed asleep, and ended up crouching in front of Hiko.

“Jiji.” He patted Hiko anxiously on the face. “Jiji, I have to pee.”

A muffled grumbling sound from Hiko’s general direction somehow resolved itself into words. “You know where it is, bozu.”

Kenichi looked toward the shoji, then back at Hiko. “Cold. Dark.” He whispered the last word in the high-pitched non-whisper of a small child. “ _Scary_.”

Hiko blew out a long-suffering sigh and got to his feet, taking Kenichi’s tiny hand in his own massive one. “Come on, then.”

The note of exasperation in his voice seemed very deliberately put-on, and the amusement beneath it was plain as he led Kenichi outside to the privy.

Once the shoji had slid shut behind them, Yukishiro-san murmured a very sleepy, “Our boy is delightful, is he not?”

Tomoe made a sound of absolute contentment as she burrowed against Kenshin in the dark. She laid her ear against his chest, curled around him, and he could tell from the movement of her face that she was smiling sleepily.

“Hiko-san loves him very much,” she murmured. “Both of his grandfathers do.”

Kenshin wrapped his arms around his wife, resting his hands on her back and pulling her even closer against him. “Don’t let Shishou hear you say that. He’d have to kick our son into a canal before he ever came close to admitting such a thing.”

“I’m pretty close to telling you both to shut up,” Enishi muttered, shifting in his futon. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“Do be quiet, Son,” Yukishiro-san yawned. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Hiko returned, his heavy footfalls nearly soundless on the floor. He held Kenichi in his arms, the boy’s head lolling against his shoulder and his breath coming in the shallow, even rhythm of sleep. And without the slightest of grumbles, Hiko settled back into his own futon with Kenichi cradled snugly and safely against his massive chest.

Tomoe hugged Kenshin more tightly, her smile broadening.

The next morning, Hiko very loudly proclaimed that “Your son found his way into my futon last night.” His face and tone were deliberately sour, and he fooled absolutely no one.

“Jiji help Kenichi pee!” the boy said from Hiko’s lap. 

They stopped dividing the house into two sleeping sections after that. 

…  
…

Two days later, after a morning’s worth of putting Enishi through his paces and a pleasant lunch out on the engawa, Hiko reached for his sake jug only to discover that a few drops remained. He stared down the neck of the jug with displeasure, as if to terrify it into refilling itself, but it remained stubbornly empty. 

Clearly, drastic steps had to be taken.

“I’m going out to find some sake,” he announced abruptly, rising to his feet and reaching for his boots. He regarded Yukishiro, who had just finished his tea and did not appear otherwise occupied.

“Why not come with me?” he offered. “You’ll know where a decent enough shop is, I hope?”

“We have sake.” Yukishiro set his empty cup down. “Should you like some now?”

Hiko arched an eyebrow at him. “If I drink your sake, then you won’t have any left either.”

“He’ll drink you out of this house if you let him, Otousan.” Enishi was sprawled on the engawa, hands behind his head. He glanced over at Hiko. “Kenshin would agree with me.”

This was true, of course, and there was a haiku pasted on the wall of the house on Mount Atago to testify to that, but Kenshin had fortunately taken his wife and son out for a walk.

“Perhaps one day you’ll learn how to appreciate sake.” Hiko glowered at his irritating apprentice. “But if I don’t have it, I can’t appreciate it either.” He turned back to Yukishiro. “Now, are we going to rectify that situation or not?”

“Very well.” Yukishiro disappeared inside the house for a moment and returned with his daisho at his waist. “Let’s go appreciate sake.”

They were halfway down the street when Hiko noticed the looks the passersby were giving them this time; instead of whispers behind hands and sidelong glances, there were looks of curiosity, unease, and was that… fear?

“Yukishiro-kun,” a male voice said behind them, and though Yukishiro stiffened for a barely-perceptible moment, he did turn around and regard the man without so much as a raised eyebrow. 

Hiko turned as well, and found himself facing a well-dressed man - a samurai, to judge from the daisho in his belt. The look on the man’s face was one of deep suspicion mingled with awe.

“Is it true?” the man asked, his eyes darting from Yukishiro to Hiko and back again.

Yukishiro’s expression didn’t waver. “Is what true, Sekiguchi-kun?”

The man looked uncomfortably at Hiko, who looked back impassively. He was in no mood to be genial to Yukishiro’s neighbors, not after the way they had treated him and his children. And so as the man squirmed, Hiko offered no assistance.

“What they’re all saying,” Sekiguchi finally offered with an almost helpless shrug.

Yukishiro regarded him for a long moment, his eyes hard. Finally he said, “They haven’t all consulted with me,” before turning away and continuing down the street. 

Hiko turned, cloak swirling, and caught up to Yukishiro in two long strides. He eyed the older man sideways for a minute before asking, “And what was that all about?”

“As I said,” Yukishiro glanced at me, “they haven’t consulted with me, but give the waterwheel time to churn. It will reach us soon enough.”

After another few minutes’ worth of walking, Yukishiro indicated a pub and steered them towards it. 

The simple noren curtain in the doorway fluttered behind Hiko as he stepped inside. The interior was dim, its lanterns unlit, and the few patrons there were seemed to have sought out the most shadowy of spots - probably because, even at this hour of the day, they were already drunk enough for sunlight to be painful to their eyes.

The rotund man behind the bar straightened up as the pair of them entered. “Welcome,” he said in a sleepy sort of voice. “What may I get for you?”

It turned out that there were several varieties of sake available, and the barkeep offered a sampling of each at a fair price. Hiko watched as the man poured out a splash of sake from each of a handful of bottles into a row of tiny cups, then repeated the process for Yukishiro. 

Perhaps because they hadn’t retreated to one of the small tables, remaining instead at the bar, the barkeep perked up a little.

“We even have some chintashu.” He placed a bottle on the counter. “At a very reasonable price.”

The label pasted to the bottle was covered in strange foreign characters that Hiko couldn’t read or even begin to recognize.

“Portuguese wine?” Yukishiro’s eyes seemed to glint behind his spectacles. 

Hiko’s head snapped around so quickly his neck popped. “You can read Portuguese?” he asked as his eyebrows did their best to merge with his hairline.

Yukishiro hesitated a moment, then frowned. “Not a word,” he muttered, in the most emotional display Hiko had yet heard from the man. He nodded to the barkeep. “We’ll try the chintashu.”

The stuff turned out to be very sweet, almost fruity, but with a very sour and unpleasant aftertaste. From the way Yukishiro took only the tiniest of sips, the chintashu didn’t agree with him any more than it had for Hiko.

“These foreigners could learn a thing or two from us about the art of alcohol,” Hiko muttered as he set the empty cup down and pushed it distastefully away with his finger. “Though perhaps this solves the mystery of why their faces are so red.”

Yukishiro glanced at him and merely quirked an eyebrow in response.

Hiko shrugged and reached for one of the cups of sake. “If the wine they drink is red, it must redden their faces even more.” 

“Perhaps that’s why Toyotomi Hideyoshi expelled the Portuguese missionaries three hundred years ago.” Yukishiro picked up the next saucer in his sake flight. “He didn’t care for their alcohol.”

Hiko snorted and picked up his own sake. “Think of how many generations of trouble could have been avoided simply by choosing the right wine to drink.” He took a sip and found the sake very pleasant, though perhaps it was only by comparison to the awful Portuguese wine. “Now there’s an idea. Diplomacy through alcohol.”

“I’m sure such a thing has been tried before,” Yukishiro murmured, nodding as the barkeep placed a small bowl of edamame, along with an empty bowl for discarded pods, on the counter in front of their sake flights. 

“Clearly not well enough.” Hiko started on the next cup. This one was slightly less sweet, but its aftertaste lingered very nicely. “Or not with the right alcohol. If the Portuguese tried their wine on people as an alternative to their religion, I can see why people would choose war instead.”

As he reached for the third cup in his flight, though, Hiko became aware of a muttered conversation from the group of men at the table closest to them. 

“...just one man? Impossible...”

“...fought at least seven armed men…”

“... a few broken bones, but none of them were cut…”

“...short little fellow with red hair…”

Hiko nearly choked on his sake at that. He turned to Yukishiro and gave him a questioning look, but Yukishiro merely placed an empty edamame pod into the discard bowl, his expression unchanging.

“... you know what they’re saying, right?”

“... I’ve heard the rumors.”

“... can’t possibly be true.”

“... why would he be in Yoshiwara, of all places?”

Hiko’s eyes narrowed. If his idiot apprentice had gotten involved in some sort of altercation in Yoshiwara, it would have to have occurred only the day before yesterday. And if the rumors had reached Musashino…

His eyes widened as it all fell into place, and he looked back at Yukishiro.

“Your neighbors,” he said in a low voice. “They’ve realized that Battousai is staying at your house.”

“How could that be possible?” Yukishiro had gone very still. “Why would he advertise such a thing?”

“... oddest part is, none of the men died.”

“... unconscious when the local watch showed up.”

“... it really couldn’t have been him though. In Yoshiwara?”

“... even hitokiri have urges that need to be filled, and what better place than there?”

Yukishiro frowned at that and reached for the last saucer in his sake flight. Hiko merely snorted derisively.

“They wouldn’t understand even if they knew the truth,” he scoffed as he picked up his own last saucer. 

None of these men, after all, would be capable of seeing his idiot apprentice as he did. None of them would ever see the way Kenshin behaved around Tomoe, or around Kenichi, or around Hiko himself. None of them would ever know his capacity for foolishness - or his capacity for good.

To them, he would always be the demon Battousai.

“We don’t know that it’s true,” Yukishiro said, once he had paid for the drinks and Hiko had acquired a new jug of sake. “People always embroider on the truth. It makes for more interesting stories to pass the time.”

They walked toward the house very slowly, as if Yukishiro were in no hurry to confront that particular truth one way or the other. 

“Oh, I’m quite certain it’s true,” Hiko grumbled. “How many other short, red-haired men could fight a street full of armed men without killing a single one of them?”

His idiot apprentice’s wrong-headed sword flashed in his mind’s eye yet again, and he couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride along with the massive wave of annoyance. For all the trouble he’d brought on Yukishiro, at least Kenshin’s skills hadn’t been hampered by his choice of weaponry. And he’d managed to avoid breaking his vow as well, at least for the time being.

“Well, why would he advertise such a thing, and in Yoshiwara of all places?” A mild note of frustration threaded through Yukishiro’s tone, though Hiko imagined that was about as close to displaying real anger as the man ever got. “I was given the impression he wanted nothing more than a peaceful life with my daughter and grandson.”

“That’s an excellent question.” Hiko frowned. “I think I’ll ask him that once we get back.”

...

Enishi was in the midst of practicing his vertical leap when they returned to the house. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and informed them that Tomoe had brought Kenichi to the Kamiyas’ house for a visit and that Kenshin was in the kitchen with Otetsudai-san. 

Hiko and Yukishiro exchanged a glance, and Yukishiro said, “You weren’t practicing that leap off the roof, were you?”

Enishi’s immediate shifty-eyed glance was the answer to that question, and it was clear father and son were about to have a conversation. 

Hiko removed his boots and went in after his idiot apprentice, sliding open the wooden door to the kitchen and finding him chopping a pile of vegetables while the housekeeper worked on something that looked like a complicated soup. 

“What did you get up to in Yoshiwara the other day?” he asked without preamble. He remained standing on the step between the dining area and the kitchen, mostly to keep his socked feet off the dirt floor of the kitchen. “Because people are talking about it in town.”

Otetsudai-san’s ears seemed to perk up at that, but she kept her eyes focused on the soup.

“I have a friend in Yoshiwara.” Kenshin didn’t look up from the vegetables either. “I told you that.”

“You did.” Hiko folded his arms. “But you didn’t tell me you’d gotten into a fight.”

Kenshin sighed and set the knife down, leaning his hands against the tabletop. “I didn’t go to Yoshiwara looking for a fight.”

Hiko rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say you went there looking for a fight, you idiot. I know you better than that.” He snorted. “They probably had it coming.”

He gestured impatiently. “But word around town is that you left half a dozen armed men unconscious with broken bones, and now people are saying that the Yukishiro household is playing host to Battousai.” 

The soup spoon clattered to the dirt floor. 

Hurriedly Otetsudai-san picked it up, put it in the washing bucket, and reached for a clean spoon. She kept her back to both of them.

Hiko lifted an eyebrow. “You can’t tell me you don’t see the problem with this situation.”

Kenshin took a breath. “I don’t want to cause problems for my father-in-law,” he said after a moment, meeting Hiko’s eyes. “But I’m not going to look the other way when armed men threaten innocent women on the streets, either.”

“Again, I never said you should have.” Hiko leveled his gaze at Kenshin. “But you could have said something, instead of letting your father-in-law find out through the town waterwheel.” He scowled. “Which has already churned more than enough in his direction.”

Kenshin frowned, and Hiko realized rather belatedly that it wasn’t like him to speak in metaphor. Perhaps Yukishiro was rubbing off on him subtly. 

“I didn’t realize…” Kenshin started, then shook his head. “I’m not used to…” He blew out a tired-sounding breath, shoulders slumping. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Was there any specific reason you didn’t mention it?” Hiko looked wryly at his idiot apprentice and indicated his wrong-headed sword. “I’d have thought you’d at least have wanted to tell me how well that thing worked.”

Kenshin picked the knife back up, hesitated for a long moment, then set it down again. Finally he said, “I’m not used to this.” He gestured to nothing in particular. “The daylight. The crowds. Talking about it. I’m not used to… any of this.”

Hiko sighed. 

“You mean you’re not used to fighting when it’s not in the context of the war.”

He had half suspected a thing like this might happen. His idiot apprentice had sunk himself so deeply in the war, both in his shadowy hitokiri work and his later time on the front lines, that it had become his only frame of reference for the manner in which his sword was to be wielded. And that was not the way for a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu stylist to think.

“I didn’t think I’d be recognized,” Kenshin said quietly. “Not by regular people.”

“Use your head.” Hiko scowled. “How many red-haired men do you think there are in this country who’d be capable of single-handedly laying out a half dozen armed men? Of course someone was bound to make the connection.” 

Kenshin seemed to deflate at that, leaning forward and pressing his hands heavily against the tabletop to support himself. 

Hiko sighed again. 

“I suppose it was only a matter of time,” he said at last. “You were never one to stand back while people were being mistreated, after all, and it would have been the height of foolishness to think you’d never see someone being mistreated again.” He arched an eyebrow. “But now that it’s happened, we’ll need to be prepared for what’s likely to follow.”

Kenshin blew out a breath. 

“If people want to come for me, that’s fine. I expected as much, and I…” He shook his head. “I know it will happen eventually. But if they come for my family… If they try to get to me through my wife or son or father-in-law…”

His tone had turned ugly, and he looked away.

“If anyone comes for your family, they’ll find me.” 

Hiko’s tone could more than match that of his idiot apprentice for ugliness without even trying. The memory of the Yaminobu was still stark and clear in his memory, and although things had turned out well in the end, there was no chance of him allowing any such thing to happen again. 

“We think you’re a hero, Himura-san,” Otetsudai-san said abruptly, though she clapped a hand over her mouth as if surprised she had spoken at all.

Kenshin turned and looked at her, and Hiko stopped in mid-word with his mouth open.

Otetsudai-san’s face reddened. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

“It’s not an intrusion at all…” Kenshin murmured.

Perhaps emboldened by that, Otetsudai-san plowed forward, though she twisted her apron between her fingers as she spoke. 

“We, that is, the people in my district… the people of Fukagawa… Common people…” The hem of her apron crinkled under her nervous grip. “We think you’re a hero. We’ve heard the stories, and we’ve talked about this recent rumor too, and…”

Hiko let his eyes travel back and forth between the stammering housekeeper and his idiot apprentice and couldn’t decide who appeared less comfortable.

“And…” She shook her head. “Not every district is Musashino.”

What this must have cost her to say, Hiko could not guess. Women were always taught diffidence, the lower classes more so, and servants yet more so again. She must have found his idiot apprentice to be quite the inspiration…

He wondered whether or not Kenshin would be able to see it.

“I…” Kenshin started, then trailed off, clearly at a loss. Finally he bowed, much lower than the housekeeper was likely used to, judging by the surprised look on her face. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Himura-san.” Otetsudai-san returned the bow, lower of course.

“There you are,” Hiko said with a gesture at the woman (to whom he most assuredly did not bow). “Not everyone will come here looking to challenge you. Some will apparently come bearing gifts.” His brow furrowed. “But they’ll know where to find you either way.”

Kenshin didn’t reply to that, picking up the knife and returning to the vegetables.

…

Dinner turned out to be a very hearty mixed vegetable and fishcake stew. The fried tofu strips and kabocha squash swimming in the broth meant that the dish was so filling, the pickles and rice went practically untouched.

“Everyone needs to fatten up for winter,” Otetsudai-san said cheerfully, spooning a generous second helping of stew into Hiko’s bowl. “It’s going to be a very cold one.”

“Kenichi fatten up for winter!” The boy slurped down a fried tofu strip as if to prove it, while his father looked on adoringly. 

Hiko paused in mid-spoonful as he realized that they had already been in Tokyo for two months. No one had even hinted at a return anytime soon to Mount Atago, and now the housekeeper was talking about the winter as though they would all remain there.

“Kenichi’s getting there already,” Enishi snorted and poked his nephew’s midsection with a forefinger. 

Kenichi lapsed into a fit of giggling, and Tomoe had to gently redirect the boy toward his dinner.

Hiko supposed that there might be some benefit in remaining there for the winter. The house was spacious enough for them all, even if the ceilings were low and the city cramped. And certainly the winter storms would not be nearly so fierce as they were on the mountain. Indeed, they might even be able to venture outside on most days, provided they were bundled up against the cold.

“We’ll have to put up the storm shutters soon, Otousan,” Enishi said through a mouthful of fishcake. 

Yukishiro nodded and accepted the bowl Otetsudai-san had refilled for him. “I never enjoy that.” Not a hint of reaction to Otetsudai-san’s words flickered in his eyes. “It turns our peaceful engawa into an enclosed corridor and serves as a constant reminder as to how cold it is.”

Hiko regarded Yukishiro, wondering whether he might be able to ascertain the man’s feelings about having half a dozen extra people in his house for the next several months, but he was as inscrutable as ever.

“Still,” Yukishiro murmured, “such things are necessary. Thank you for the reminder, Enishi.”

Enishi’s eyes lit up at that, and he hurriedly looked down into his bowl and shoved a heap of vegetables in his mouth. 

“I suppose it’s a good thing we boarded up the house on Atago, then,” Hiko muttered, looking around the room at his family.

“We might return to a family of deer living in our house,” Kenshin mused, and Kenichi giggled, nearly burbling a mouthful of stew down his front.

“They’ll have eaten all the pickles.” Tomoe carefully mopped her son’s face. “Certainly all the dried fish.”

Hiko was on the point of reminding her that deer would have very little use for dried fish when someone knocked very loudly and purposefully at the front gate.

Hard enough that it sounded like they wished to kick the door off its hinges.

“Are you expecting someone?” Enishi asked his father, his mouth half full and a quizzical look on his face.

A slight frown crossed Yukishiro’s face, as Otetsudai-san rose smoothly to her feet and stepped into her zori.

“Himura Battousai,” a loud voice shouted from beyond the gate. “Open the gate in the name of the Imperial government!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Hey-ho, I'm back with a long ass chapter to make up for my absence. Didja want some notes too? Well, that's what I've got for you.
> 
> First, yeah, kitchens had dirt floors, which is why there'd be a shoe-leaving step between kitchen and dining room. It makes sense when you consider their houses were made of wood, the walls were stuffed with seaweed, and the tatami were made of straw. Japan has a long ass history of accidentally (or deliberately) burning down entire sections of their cities, so having dirt floor kitchens at least kinda sorta mitigated the risk of OOPS, THERE GOES TOKYO AGAIN. 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> I feel like I need to talk about kamuro girls, the child assistants of oiran who were generally between 5-11 years old. 
> 
> Yes, desperate parents would sell their daughters to brothels. Selling them to brothels where they could become oiran, instead of just "common" pleasure girls, was preferable, as they'd be clean, fed, cared for, taught to read and write, and also taught numerous entertaining skills. The oiran took on the enormous cost of caring for and educating kamuro girls, as having kamuro girls added to an oiran's prestige and desirability. It also added to an oiran's enormous debt to her brothel though, keeping her trapped there even after her contract ended. And yeah, kamuro girls would be given cute, matchy-matchy names, hence Kanomo and Konomo.
> 
> HOWEVER, once they were between 11-13, it was time to become shinzou (and receive new, 'sexier' names), which are like apprentice oiran. And yes, that means they engaged in sex work. Yes, at the age of 11. Yes, it's too horrific to really think about it. Yes, the same thing would have happened to Yumi.
> 
> Only the really talented, popular shinzou ever became oiran, btw. And since oiran had to be the MOST fashionable, the most attended to, the most everything, it added to her brothel debt. The industry kept women trapped in a vicious cycle. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> Y'all keep asking about Shishio every time Yumi pops up. Friends, Shishio is DEAD. Dead, dead, deadski. The government said so, and why would the government lie? 
> 
> So, keeping in mind that Shishio is SUPER DEAD, hit me up with your comments, questions, feedback, and the like. Y'all are the persimmons of life (that's a good thing). And remember, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.


	28. Waterwheel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ICKLE BITTY GLOSSARY  
> Engawa : Japanese-style front porch, often wraps around a building  
> Kiheitai : Ishin Shishi’s modern militia compromised of men from all social classes  
> Seiza : the traditional, formal way of sitting on the knees  
> Bakufu : Tokugawa government

**Founding year of Meiji  
(a few moments later)**

Hiko sat in openmouthed surprise for a moment before an angry glower descended over his face. 

For the so-called town waterwheel to churn out the rumor that his idiot apprentice was actually Battousai was one thing; rumors could never be definitively proven. But for a loud-mouthed representative of the new government to actually _announce_ it to everyone within the reach of his braying voice?

He turned to look at Yukishiro, whose face was certainly no longer impassive, eyes wide behind his spectacles and soup spoon forgotten in his hand.

Otetsudai-san hesitated for a moment, then went over to the gate, right as Kenshin stood wordlessly, slid his sword into his belt, and stepped onto the engawa. 

“Kaachan, what happen?” Kenichi looked at his mother, spoon still clutched in his tiny fist. “What happen, Kaachan?”

Tomoe appeared frozen, a look of clear distress on her face as she helplessly watched her husband move away from her. Enishi’s expression was no less distressed, though he reacted very much as Hiko expected him to.

“No,” Hiko said crisply as his second apprentice picked up his bokutou and made to spring to his feet. He looked Enishi in the eyes and shook his head slowly for emphasis. “Not yet.”

“Why?” Enishi glowered up at him. “You want him to handle this alone?”

“For now?” Hiko raised an eyebrow as he regarded the boy. “Yes.”

He paused, looking over at his own sword lying close at hand beside the open shoji. He could reach it easily if it came to that. 

“I want to see what these buffoons are here to do. After we’ve learned that, we can deal with them as the situation calls for.” He raised a warning finger to Enishi. “But they’re the ones bringing trouble to your father’s house, boy, not us.”

Yukishiro seemed to snap out of his stupor at that, setting his spoon down and joining Kenshin on the engawa, just as a parade of well-dressed men, all with daisho at their sides, trooped into the house through the open gate. They paid no attention to Otetsudai-san, who remained bent in a bow as they passed.

Hiko could not help but notice the presence of a dozen soldiers out in the street before Otetsudai-san shut the gate. They all held Western rifles and stood at straight-backed attention.

“Quite a display of muscle,” Yukishiro murmured, so quietly Hiko almost didn’t hear him.

“Himura-kun,” the man in front said without preamble, striding up to Kenshin immediately. He was neither a tall nor a broad man, but his eyes were large and sharp and he exuded authority. “I see the rumors were true.”

“Yamagata-san.” Kenshin nodded. “It’s been some time.” He turned to his family and said, “This is Yamagata Aritomo. He served under Takasugi Shinsaku in the Kiheitai and was a staff officer during the Boshin War.”

Hiko regarded the man sourly.

His idiot apprentice had been recruited directly from the Kiheitai, after all, and this man very likely still considered himself Kenshin’s superior. It was somewhat pleasant to imagine how quickly either Kenshin or he could cut a swath through the entire group of them, including the riflemen outside, but only pleasant in the same way as musing over how quickly he might swat an irritating cluster of flies.

As if to remind the men of their fine samurai manners, Kenshin turned back to them and gestured toward Yukishiro. “This is my father-in-law, Yukishiro Takeshi.”

Yamagata turned his head slightly to regard Yukishiro and held him for a moment with those piercing eyes. To his credit, though, Yukishiro’s gaze was far less transparent and infinitely more formidable.

In the end, Yamagata moved first. He inclined his head in the suggestion of a bow. “Please forgive my intrusion, Yukishiro-san.” He straightened. “However, the government has pressing business with your son-in-law.”

Hiko was reminded that Yukishiro had been on the losing side of the war, and therefore had no standing whatsoever in the eyes of these men. They had come so brashly into his house, and they had addressed Kenshin before him, and they expected him to endure it with humility.

Hiko would have drawn his sword on them already if this had been his house.

Instead, and with that perfect, bland neutrality Hiko disliked so much, Yukishiro said, “I’d be honored, then, if you’d join us for tea. Regrettably, we’ve already started our dinner.”

Otetsudai-san bustled past them, bowing as she went, before she disappeared into the kitchen.

The men marched up to the engawa, slid their feet out of their zori and their katana from their belts, and seated themselves along the wooden platform. They left the place of honor to Yamagata, and aside from him, none of them spoke a word.

Kenshin set his sword aside and settled on the engawa, seiza-fashion, next to Yukishiro. No one seemed terribly inclined to start the conversation until Otetsudai-san reappeared with a tea tray and spent what felt like a very long moment serving everyone in turn.

Tomoe, Enishi, and Kenichi - who was now sitting in his mother’s lap, eyes wide - remained in the dining space, forgotten or ignored. Enishi, despite his orders to the contrary, had indeed picked up his bokutou and was watching the group of men with a sour expression and a sharp look in his eyes. 

Tomoe, on the other hand, had schooled her expression into one of familiar inscrutability. 

“I will make this simple and direct, Himura-kun.” Yamagata accepted his cup of tea without so much as a glance at Otetsudai-san. 

A slight frown tugged at the corner of Kenshin’s mouth. 

“The new government needs you,” Yamagata said. “The new military needs you.”

Kenshin accepted the last cup of tea from Otetsudai-san, nodding his thanks and setting the cup down carefully on the engawa before directing his attention to Yamagata.

“What could they possibly need me for?” 

Hiko knew enough to know that his idiot apprentice was only playing at being an idiot this time. Kenshin knew perfectly well what they wanted from him, and what the government needed him for. Either they would put him to work as a hitokiri again, or they would make him some sort of military commander in an attempt to place him as a figurehead of inspiration to their new army.

He sized up Yamagata in an instant. 

This man was clearly from a samurai background himself, used to being obeyed and used to throwing his weight around. Probably a lower-ranking samurai like Hiko’s own fool of an older brother, Kazushige. Probably swollen with self-importance at his role in upending the Bakufu. Probably serene in the assurance of his superiority, thanks to his rank and his retinue of armed companions.

Definitely unaware of how foolishly mistaken he was of that, in such close proximity to the two most dangerous men in all of Japan.

“The task of building a nation is far more difficult than merely winning a war.” Yamagata kept his eyes fixed on Kenshin. “I want you to come to work for us.”

Tomoe inhaled quietly. 

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of much use,” Kenshin said after a moment. “I lack the vision or the strategic skills of men like Katsura Kogoro or Okubo Toshimichi.”

Yukishiro stiffened almost imperceptibly at the name of Katsura Kogoro, but his expression remained as unreadable as ever. 

Yamagata peered critically at Kenshin with those hawkish eyes of his.

“And yet, to hear either of those men talk, the war would have been utterly lost without you.” Yamagata’s mouth twitched as though he were about to smile, but it never came to pass. “And this period of time is, if anything, more critical than the past few years.”

“This period of time is critical in building the nation back up. It will require men of vision and diplomacy,” Kenshin agreed. “And I have no talent in those areas, nor the desire to return to my previous work.”

Hiko saw his apprentice’s words pass over Yamagata without affecting him in the slightest and knew that Yamagata had no intention of leaving without an acquiescence. That however gently his idiot apprentice tried to couch his refusal in self-deprecation, Yamagata would simply brush it aside and insist even more stubbornly.

That in the end, it was likely going to require a flat and blunt order to leave. And Hiko found himself eager to get on with it.

“Himura-kun, I doubt you can truly grasp the significance of your involvement in the revolution.” Yamagata was trying for a smile, but the effect was anything but pleasant. “Nor what you would mean to the common people as an inspiration, if you were to rejoin us.”

In the background, Otetsudai-san winced perceptibly.

“He said no!” Enishi surged to his feet suddenly, bokutou in hand. 

Yukishiro frowned. “Enishi.”

There was the barest hint of a rebuke in Yukishiro’s tone, yet it pulled the boy up short. He fought to master himself, though he couldn’t wipe the scowl from his face. 

“Well, he did,” he finally said, sitting back down but keeping a tight grip on his bokutou. “They just don’t want to hear it.”

“Touchan said no,” Kenichi whispered, and Tomoe shushed him and stroked his hair. 

“I must apologize for my son’s rudeness,” Yukishiro said blandly. “We’ve all just become accustomed to having my son-in-law with us, and none of us are eager for him to leave any time soon.”

Hiko gave an audible snort. That was likely as close as Yukishiro would ever come to telling these men to go to the demons.

One of the men - his prominent forehead the most notable thing about him - sighed noticeably. 

Yamagata glanced at him. “This is my associate, Kawaji Toshiyoshi. He’s going to be doing the critical work of modernizing local security forces throughout the country.”

Kawaji nodded. “Another area where your assistance would be much appreciated, Himura-kun. But…” He hesitated a moment. “Katsura-san said you likely wouldn’t be interested in any government work whatsoever and that it was probably best to leave you be.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Hiko snapped. He glared at both Yamagata and Kawaji in turn. “Your superior told you not to come here. Common sense ought to have told you the same. And yet here you are, interrupting our dinner, announcing to the whole district that a former hitokiri can be found at my friend’s house, and trying to drag my apprentice back to a business he’s far better off away from!”

Kawaji’s eyes widened. “ _Apprentice_?”

“Apprentice?” Yamagata looked back and forth disbelievingly between Kenshin and Hiko.

Kenshin sighed. “Despite popular belief, I didn’t come into this world knowing how to wield a sword.”

Enishi snorted. 

Hiko, his eyes narrowed, did not spare Kenshin a glance. “It ought to be more than enough for you that a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu swordsman served you in any way at all, let alone fought for your cause for years. And yet here you are, demanding more.” He scoffed. “You have your answer. Now go.”

Yamagata’s mouth thinned into a disapproving line. “Very well. If you change your mind, Himura-kun, you know where to find us.”

Kenshin nodded. “I appreciate the offer, but I won’t be changing my mind.”

Again Yamagata inclined his head slightly, and then he rose to his feet, slid his sword into his belt, stepped off the engawa into his zori, and turned to leave. Behind him, Kawaji faced Yukishiro and gave a deeper bow.

“We apologize for interrupting your dinner, Yukishiro-san.”

One by one, the rest of them followed suit, each offering a silent bow to Yukishiro before following Yamagata and Kawaji out the gate. They joined the soldiers in the street, and even after Otetsudai-san had closed and bolted the gate with trembling hands, their marching footfalls could be heard growing fainter down the street.

Hiko turned his attention to his apprentice, who hadn’t moved from his position on the engawa. “They certainly don’t seem intelligent enough to keep from repeating their mistake.” 

He wondered how long they would wait before returning to try their luck again.

Otetsudai-san returned to the engawa. “Should I reheat dinner, Yukishiro-sama?”

“No, thank you.” Yukishiro shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

Otetsudai-san bowed and murmured that she would be in the kitchen if they needed her, before hurrying away.

Kenshin sighed and looked at his father-in-law. “I’m sorry.” He clenched at the fabric of his hakama. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Enishi burst out, gesturing at the gate. “They’re the ones who came here!”

Tomoe laid a hand gently on her brother’s forearm. Her other arm was still around Kenichi, who was taking everything in with wide and uncertain eyes. Tomoe’s own eyes were on her husband. “You did tell them you weren’t interested. Perhaps they’ll leave well enough alone.”

She did not sound hopeful.

Yukishiro rose smoothly to his feet. “It likely would have happened eventually, and what’s done is done.” He reseated himself in front of his meal tray. “Come, everyone, we shouldn’t let Otetsudai-san’s fine cooking go to waste.”

And as he rejoined the rest of them in finishing the meal, Hiko made a mental note that the next time a group of men came looking to re-recruit his idiot apprentice, he would meet them face-to-face, with his sword in hand, before they could create this kind of a disturbance a second time.

…  
…

Sleep didn’t come easily to Kenshin that night. Or the next night, really, or the night after that. 

Three sleepless nights, with nothing to show for it except an increasing paranoia that representatives of the government would choose to return _that_ day - perhaps with other men further up the chain of command, perhaps even with Katsura Kogoro or Okubo Toshimichi themselves - demanding further answers from him.

Further action from him. 

Calling him to account for what they would surely see as inaction on his part, when the new government was so _very_ new, and when they needed all the experienced help they could get to maintain their hard-won but fragile peace.

What, if anything, did he owe them still?

He spent three restless days watching and waiting, his mind elsewhere while he went about assisting Otetsudai-san with the housework or playing another round of tag or three with Kenichi and Kaoru.

Did he have the right to submerge himself in the mundanity of everyday life while the new era that he had worked so hard to bring about was still in its delicate nascency?

“Clearly that laundry you’re hanging requires a great deal of focus and attention.” 

Kenshin’s head snapped up at that, damp nagajuban forgotten in his hands. 

Hiko had come around to the side of the house, near the back gate where the laundry poles and the well were situated, and where a freshly-washed bucket of laundry waited neglected at Kenshin’s feet.

“What?” Kenshin managed, realizing all at once that he had no idea what had been said to him or how long he had been standing there holding his wife’s underlayers. 

“So much so that you’ve blocked everything else out for fear of distraction.” Hiko looked at him sourly. “Either that, or your mind is going to places it has no business being.”

“I’m just…” Kenshin shook his head and moved to carefully thread the sleeves of the nagajuban across the bamboo laundry pole. “I’m just tired.”

“Of the war pursuing you even after you won it?” Hiko arched an eyebrow, then sighed deeply. “I’m not surprised.”

Kenshin didn’t know how to answer that. Instead he plucked another nagajuban from the bucket, shook it out, and arranged it on the pole. 

He was rather grateful that his son appeared and demanded his shishou’s attention right then and there.

“If they come back again,” Enishi said abruptly over what had started out as a perfectly anodyne dinner, “we should throw them out. Like, physically.”

Before Kenshin could respond to that, Yukishiro-san said:

“Ah yes, assaulting a government official.” His father-in-law didn’t even look up from his rice bowl. “The waterwheel will certainly churn after that.”

“Let it churn.” Enishi scowled. “It’s going to churn anyway. It might as well churn with something _interesting_.”

“Let it churn,” Kenichi echoed through a mouthful of fish. 

Hiko nodded approvingly from where he sat beside Kenichi, patting the boy on the head. Tomoe, however, frowned.

“The neighborhood may forget about what happened if enough time passes without it being mentioned,” she murmured. “But if other men from the government come back, then no one will talk of anything else.”

Kenshin doubted the neighborhood ever forgot anything. 

Musashino didn’t strike him as a very forgetful sort of place, and his presence had all but assured that the Yukishiro family would forever be on the neighbors’ lips. Or churning in the waterwheel, as his father-in-law might have phrased it.

He chewed mechanically on a piece of fish without tasting it.

Halfway through his fourth night of sleeplessness, he found himself sitting on the steps of the family bathhouse in his sleeping yukata. 

He had considered going into the kitchen and making himself a cup of tea, but surely that would wake someone, and so he situated himself far enough from the main house so as not to disturb anyone, but close enough so that he could be right there if his wife or son needed him.

Four days, and neither government officials nor angry neighbors had presented themselves, and yet he sat outside with only the moon and his troubled thoughts for company.

A soft footstep behind him, however, announced that he had company of a different sort. And the light scent of hakubaikou on the air told him who it was without needing to turn around.

“Not sleeping won’t help,” Tomoe said softly, settling down beside him.

Kenshin sighed and wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist, nudging her closer. “I’m not trying to not sleep.”

“But you aren’t trying to sleep either.” Tomoe nestled her head against his shoulder and spoke in a gentle but insistent voice. “Those first few weeks on Mount Atago, you wouldn’t let yourself do more than rest your eyes. I saw what that did to you.” 

Her fingers, as insistent as her voice, threaded between his own and would not let go. “I won’t let you do that to yourself again.”

“This isn’t the same thing at all.” He rested his head against hers and breathed in the familiar, comforting scent of her. “I’m just…”

She waited just long enough for him to realize he had no way to complete that thought.

“If you’re not going to come back to bed,” she said in that same soft voice, her head never moving from his shoulder, “then talk to me.”

“I’d rather stare at the moon than stare at the ceiling,” he murmured. “I’m used to the moon for company. The ceiling, not so much.”

There was a long pause before Tomoe replied.

“You aren’t in Kyoto anymore,” she said simply. “You aren’t fighting the war anymore. You’ve earned a ceiling to look at instead of the moon, and you have many more options for company.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and just let the scent of hakubaikou wash over him. If he could fall asleep like that…

But it wasn’t really that simple.

“We could take a walk,” he said after a moment. “That’s supposed to be relaxing. Meditative, even. But…” 

He couldn’t quite find the words to explain that the idea of walking through the city at night - any city, on any night - seemed like the farthest possible thing from relaxing. That, in fact, the very idea of it made his stomach clench.

“But you’ve had enough of walking the streets in the dark,” she finished as if reading his mind. She nestled closer to him, as if her proximity could banish his dark thoughts and fears. “I can’t say I blame you.”

Another sigh slipped from his mouth, and he turned and pressed a kiss to the side of her head.

“I’m sorry I brought trouble to your father’s door,” he breathed. “I should have known better. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“You didn’t bring trouble to my father’s door.” She tightened her fingers sharply in his, as if to convey momentary irritation without moving out of his embrace. “They did.”

“I led them to the door.” He kept his forehead leaned against the side of her head. 

“Hardly.” A sour note crept into her voice. “The town waterwheel churned, as it always does, and it has never brought anything but trouble to our house.” She sighed, and the ice in her tone melted. “All you did was to prevent a group of armed troublemakers from killing a woman in the middle of a street. You’re a good man, Kenshin.”

She said it as though she were afraid he didn’t believe it.

“You know me too well,” he said quietly.

“Too well to let you brood?” Her fingers tightened in his once more, though it felt like reassurance this time rather than annoyance. A substitute for the brief smile he could not see. “I know you as well as I need to, my love. As well as you need me to.”

“You’re going to tell me to come back to bed now, aren’t you?”

“I’ve already done that.” She burrowed deeper into his shoulder and did not release his hand. “When you’re ready to go, I’ll follow you.” She sighed with what might have been contented pleasure. “Until then, I’ll stay right here with you.”

He lost track of how long they sat there, but eventually, Tomoe dozed off against his shoulder. Eventually, Kenshin started in surprise, eyes snapping open when he realized he had nodded off too. And eventually, they walked arm and arm back to the house and crawled into their respective futon.

Maybe he slept a little better that evening, but not by much.

…

Four sleepless nights, and nothing to show for it except paranoia that had spiraled into insomnia and could easily descend into something much worse.

The only path forward, then, was to confront the issue directly.

After the breakfast dishes had been cleared away and the family had settled into the morning’s activities - Hiko and Enishi training in the courtyard while Kenichi looked on in wide-eyed fascination, Yukishiro-san and Tomoe settling down in front of the shogi board - Kenshin abruptly announced:

“I’m going to take a walk.”

“Would you like some company?” Tomoe asked, looking up from the shogi board.

“No, you’ve just gotten started.” Kenshin rose to his feet. “I’ll be back before you lose your third round.”

A hint of a smile flickered across Yukishiro-san’s mouth.

“Oh, then you’re not going far.” Tomoe’s eyes and the corners of her mouth twitched in a smile very much like her father’s. “Take care.”

“Hey, where you going?” Enishi shouted, which meant he foolishly took his eyes off what he should have been paying attention to and ended up with a face full of dirt.

“Out for a walk,” Hiko said smoothly, resting his bokutou over his shoulder and glowering down at Enishi. “He said as much. What exactly were you paying attention to, if not my attack or anything that was going on in its periphery?”

“Bye bye, Touchan!” Kenichi called cheerfully, drowning out whatever muttered retort Enishi was in the middle of making.

The few passersby out and about in Musashino gave Kenshin a wide berth, but otherwise didn’t do or say anything. Which was for the best, but also possibly suggested that they thought he might do...

What, exactly?

Best not to think on it too much.

The nascent Meiji government didn’t yet have an official headquarters, but as the Emperor had moved into the former Shogun’s castle, they had situated themselves in the nearby samurai district of Kudankita. 

This was where the upper-class samurai lived, the ones who had been direct retainers to the Shogun, and though it was only a short walk from Musashino, the difference was immediately apparent. The lime-washed walls lining the district might have been the same, but the sprawling, multi-level compounds were nothing like what one would see in Musashino. 

Kenshin had no intention of spending the morning wandering around, checking the various compounds until he hit on the right one. Instead, he settled into a tea garden, ordered himself a cup of burdock root tea, and let it be known that Himura Battousai was looking for an audience with Katsura Kogoro.

How quickly would Kudankita’s waterwheel churn?

He was blowing the steam off his second cup of tea and admiring the display of bonsai trees situated around the pavilion when a tall man dressed in unremarkable clothing approached him from his left.

“Himura-san?” 

The man’s voice was quiet and respectful, but deep. Kenshin turned to look at him, seeing no daisho at his waist. His eyes were as calm as his voice, and he waited for Kenshin to nod in confirmation before continuing.

“I’ve come to bring you to Katsura-sama,” the man said with a bow. “If this is a convenient time for you, then please come with me.”

It was a pity he wouldn’t have the chance to finish the burdock root tea - it was quite good - but he followed the man out into the street. A few minutes of walking through Kundankita’s twisting streets brought them to a much more heavily-guarded street, and then through a gate that led into a sprawling, multi-storied compound surrounded by an ornate garden of arched bridges and delicate ponds.

He wondered which samurai family had lived there before following the Shogun into exile.

The man didn’t lead Kenshin into the house. Instead, they walked the perimeter and into another sprawling garden. Katsura stood by one of the large ponds, feeding frenzied koi a bowlful of dried rice.

A faint smile tugged at Kenshin’s mouth.

The tall man announced him, bowed, and quickly left. Katsura turned in that unhurried manner he had always displayed even in the most dire of circumstances. His face bore a welcoming and familiar smile.

“Himura.” He inclined his head and gestured for Kenshin to come closer. “I hadn’t expected to see you again. You look well.”

“Katsura-san.” Kenshin returned the nod. “Kudankita suits you.”

He didn’t offer an assessment of how Katsura looked. The man looked exhausted, which Kenshin supposed came with trying to build a government from the ground up after a lengthy and brutal war. His eyes, however, were as sharp as ever.

“You’re too kind.” Katsura breathed out a heavy sigh. “I know how I look. The work of creating a new country and a new government is even more difficult than fighting a war.” He expelled a humorless laugh that was no more than a single puff of air from his nostrils. “And it’s likely to take far longer.”

He beckoned for Kenshin to follow him towards the expansive engawa, where a woman knelt pouring tea into two cups already set out. She bowed as they seated themselves, then melted away silently.

Kenshin set his sword down next to him. “However long it takes, you’ve already gotten this far. We’ve made it into the new era we fought so hard for.”

Katsura simply picked up his tea and gazed into it for a long moment before taking his first sip.

“I’d imagined you would simply vanish into the countryside. When you disappeared after Hokkaido, I expected to hear far-off rumors every so often.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect to hear of you in Tokyo.”

“I didn’t expect the waterwheel to churn so thoroughly,” Kenshin replied, and when Katsura’s brows rose into his hairline, he shook his head and added, “I didn’t announce myself in Tokyo, but it seems rumors flow very quickly.”

“Indeed.” Something of the old sparkle seemed to come back into Katsura’s eyes. “Especially rumors of Battousai fighting a dozen men on a street in Yoshiwara and yet leaving them all alive.” 

“Half a dozen.” Kenshin frowned. “At most.”

A bit more of the haggard tension appeared to drain from Katsura’s face as he laughed softly. “As modest as ever, I see.” He sipped his tea. “I’m glad you came to see me, Himura. I’d thought about sending men to look for you, but I thought that would be rude.” He smiled in a tired sort of way. “This is much more agreeable.”

“Indeed.” Kenshin nodded. “And I’m glad you’re well, Katsura-san, even if the work of rebuilding the country is more strenuous than tearing it down.”

He lifted his teacup and took a sip; matcha instead of burdock root, but of a very high quality, and he gave himself a moment to savor the subtle flavor.

“I had a visit from Yamagata Aritomo.” He set the cup down and looked at Katsura. “At my father-in-law’s house in Musashino.”

The smile on Katsura’s face vanished instantly.

“I see,” he said after a lengthy pause. His tone was grave and bore the hint of displeasure. “This visit was not on my orders. I’d discussed the possibility of reaching out to you with a handful of my compatriots, but I decided that you were best left in peace.” He frowned. “I see the message was unclear.”

“Perhaps.” Kenshin bit back a sigh. “Or perhaps Yamagata-san chose which part of the message he best preferred.” 

He took no particular pleasure in the possibility of heaping any trouble on Yamagata’s head, nor on any of the men who had accompanied him, but he took even less pleasure at the idea of exposing his family to any further visits or rumors. 

And so he laid out the facts exactly as they had happened.

“I don’t expect that will be the last visit. I know that there will be others who want to talk to me.” A beat, then, “Or confront me, and that’s fine. But Musashino is a district filled with the former Shogun’s retainers. My presence there already complicates things for my family.”

Katsura looked pained. Setting down his teacup with a heavy sigh, he shook his head before turning back to regard Kenshin.

“Your father-in-law doesn’t approve of you, then?” He sighed. “I suppose that should be no surprise. The amount of ill will borne by the samurai against the Ishin Shishi is something I’ve spent a great many sleepless nights trying to decide how best to counter. I doubt if anything but the passage of time will dispel it.”

That was not a comforting thought, but there was nothing to be done for it right then. 

“Then you understand why a visit from our new government can’t happen again.” Kenshin didn’t phrase it as a question. “For my family’s sake.”

“Of course.” Katsura did not hesitate an instant in his response. “As I said, the fault was clearly mine. I should have made it unmistakably plain that I did not want you disturbed.” Katsura bowed to Kenshin, more deeply than he ordinarily would have done, and the message was perfectly clear. “You have my promise, Himura.”

…

Kenshin returned to his father-in-law’s house, neatly-wrapped package of burdock root tea in hand, to find his son attempting to climb an enormous, straw-wrapped bushel of rice that had been left just beyond the front gate. 

One of _four_ enormous, straw-wrapped bushels of rice, in fact, that had most definitely not been there when he had left the house earlier.

The rest of the family were arrayed in a rough half-circle around the bushels of rice, all wearing expressions that ranged from amusement (Hiko) to bewilderment (Enishi). Only Yukishiro-san appeared unaffected by the sudden appearance of several months’ worth of rice in his courtyard.

“Ah, Himura-kun.” Yukishiro-san reached a hand into his sleeve and withdrew a folded letter. “The porter who made the delivery also delivered this.”

“I… thank you.” Kenshin accepted the letter, feeling just as bewildered as Enishi looked, and pushed the package of tea into Tomoe’s hands before unfolding the letter. “I brought tea.”

“Oh.” She accepted the package, her eyes still on the mountain of rice. “Did you have something to do with that as well?”

“Actually…” Kenshin frowned. “I don’t know yet. Let me find out.”

The calligraphy was very familiar. 

Too familiar, and Kenshin felt an old rush of barely-suppressed nausea that he thought had been left behind in Kyoto’s blood-stained streets and alleys. 

He pushed the memories aside. There was no black envelope. It was not that kind of letter. 

_Himura,_

_I hope that your father-in-law will consent to accept this as a token of my apology for the behavior of Yamagata and his companions. Perhaps it will help to offset the unwanted notoriety that your presence has brought him._

_I reiterate my promise: your privacy will be respected, and the harmony of the Yukishiro home will not be disturbed again by any visits from the Imperial government._

_-Katsura Kogoro_

Ah.

Well, then.

Kenshin folded the letter, tucked it into his kimono, and turned to his father-in-law. “Katsura Kogoro sends his apologies for the earlier disturbance and promises it won’t happen again.”

Enishi frowned. “Who’s Katsura Kogoro?”

Hiko looked at him sourly. “Don’t you even bother to read the broadsheets when you go down the mountain? Or do you just listen to the fools who sing songs in the street?”

“Singing fools,” Kenichi said cheerfully, swinging his feet back and forth from his seat atop the rice bushel. “Nishi-jichan listen to singing fools.”

Enishi’s frown very quickly turned into a scowl. “Well, if you’re going to put it like that, there’s no way I can answer.”

“Enishi, do pay attention,” Yukishiro-san said mildly, then shifted back to Kenshin. “Katsura Kogoro wrote that letter?”

Kenshin nodded. “And he sent the rice. As a token of his apology.” He gestured toward the bushels. “These are all for you.”

For the first time, a flicker of an expression crossed Yukishiro-san’s face - the barest hint of a smile.

“All but one of them, I think.” He turned his head slightly, where the housekeeper hovered just behind him. “That one should go home with Otetsudai-san this evening.”

Otetsudai-san gasped audibly and bowed very low, hands clenched in front of her. “Yukishiro-sama, I… I cannot…” She straightened and looked at him. “I couldn’t possibly-”

Yukishiro-san shook his head. “I do insist.”

“Ojiisan insist,” Kenichi added.

“Thank you.” Otetsudai-san bowed low once again. “This will mean so much to my family. This will be enough rice for several months. Thank you.”

“Well then.” Hiko stepped forward and hefted one of the huge bushels onto his shoulder as though it were empty. “I doubt you’ll want these sitting out in the yard. Just show me where you want me to put them.”

His voice was deliberately gruff. Kenshin just barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

“Storage shed,” Otetsudai-san said, a bit breathlessly. 

“Well?” Hiko turned to Enishi with a raised eyebrow and a scowl. “Lend a hand, boy. It’s good training.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Enishi hoisted one bushel onto his back with a grunt. “These things are heavier than Kenichi.”

“They’re probably heavier than his father, too,” Hiko snorted.

Kenshin picked up the third bushel and let Enishi lead the way toward the back gate, where the storage shed was situated. Once they were out of earshot, he glanced over at his shishou and murmured, “Too much sentimentality for you, then?”

“By far,” Hiko agreed, opening the door to the shed with one hand while effortlessly balancing the heavy bushel of rice on his shoulder with the other. “Not that I disagree with your father-in-law’s generosity, of course, but there’s only so much maudlin emotion I’m willing to remain in the vicinity of.”

Enishi dropped the rice bushel to the floor with a heavy thud. “So if this Katsura guy is willing to send you bushels of rice as an apology, why not get a job with him?”

“I had a job with him,” Kenshin said evenly, setting down his own bushel next to what appeared to be other dried goods. “I don’t care for another one.”

Hiko snorted as he placed his bushel down lightly atop the other two. “You see? Every so often, you do make good decisions.”

“Yeah, but don’t let it go to your head or anything.” Enishi rolled his eyes. “He did say ‘every so often’.”

“I think the best decision I could make right now is to not stand inside a storage shed, having this conversation,” Kenshin said, then ducked out of the shed and headed toward his wife and son. 

Perhaps he would sleep much easier that evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE FIRST  
> Let's just jump right into some cultural stuff!
> 
> Unlike in the manga/anime, the government is not yet wearing Western dress/hairstyles. They're still in traditional Japanese dress/ponytails. In 1871, the Emperor required that ALL government officials adopt Western dress and that all samurai cut their hair. (Yes, even samurai not working for the government had to cut their hair, so yes, that includes Papa Yukishiro.) However, regular, non-government people continued to wear traditional Japanese clothing well into the 1920s-1930s, because who can afford to toss out their ENTIRE WARDROBE and replace it wholesale? 
> 
> NOTE THE SECOND  
> Yeah, Yamagata was a real dude, and he popped up in the early part of the anime/manga. And you may remember Kawaji from the anime, the police-looking dude with the ENORMOUSLY BIG HEAD, who was SOBBING WITH GRIEF and practically rending his garments (after Okubo Toshimichi was assassinated) while Kenshin and Saitou stood in the back of the office uncomfortably (probably wondering if Kawaji had been secretly in love with Okubo or something). 
> 
> That aside, yeah, it was Kawaji's job to create a modern police force in Japan. What did they use for police before that, you ask? Deputized samurai acted as the local watch, basically. And it's also why samurai like Saitou went on to become cops. Yeah, he was on the losing side, but he was Shinsengumi, he was skilled at exactly what they needed, and he actually wanted to, you know, MOVE FORWARD in the new era and not just sit around, feeling sulky because his side lost. (Ever the pragmatist, that Saitou, except where it concerns his unrequited crush on Kenshin, but I digress...)
> 
> Also, yeah, I know KATSURA KOGORO had like 20 different names throughout his life and was probably going by Kido Takayoshi at this time, but like WHATEVER, MAN, I'm keeping track of a lot of historically accurate stuff here, Imma let that one accuracy ball bounce away. 
> 
> NOTE THE THIRD  
> I had Tomoe call Kenshin "my love." (Because it's Valentine's Day! Awww! No, j/k, this chapter was written back in November.) It's the best translation of "anata" I could think of, which is a term of endearment used by wives to their husbands, but also literally means "you."
> 
> NOTE THE FOURTH  
> Talk to meeeeeeeee! As always!


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